Orvieto

The rock was the site of Velzna, the Etruscan city the Romans called Volsinii — one of the twelve cities of the Etruscan confederation and among the most prosperous in Etruria, as its necropolises show. Its location was long disputed, but it is now identified with Orvieto's hill, while the Roman Volsinii that replaced it lay at modern Bolsena. Rome destroyed the city in 264 BC and moved the survivors to the lake shore, where the new Volsinii rose.

By the 7th century the town had its own bishops, and in the 13th and 14th centuries it reached its height as a free commune of about 30,000 people, with a ring of palaces and a long relationship with the popes. Martin IV lived here from 1281 to 1284, and the Miracle of Bolsena of 1263, in which a doubting priest is said to have seen the host bleed, led to the institution of the feast of Corpus Domini and in 1290 to the foundation of the cathedral. Factional wars between the Monaldeschi and their rivals divided the city, which submitted to the Papal States after Cardinal Albornoz occupied it in 1354.

Clement VII took refuge here during the Sack of Rome in 1527 and ordered wells cut through the rock to secure water in a siege, the origin of St Patrick's Well and the Pozzo della Cava. In 1860 volunteers forced the papal garrison to surrender, and Orvieto became part of the province of Umbria. The comune grew to just over 25,000 people in 1961 and has shrunk slowly since, while the funicular and the railway bring a steady flow of day visitors.

Orvieto's identity is bound to its cathedral and to the Eucharist. The Corpus Domini procession honours the Miracle of Bolsena, whose relic is kept in the cathedral, and is accompanied by a historical parade of about 400 people in costume. At Pentecost the Festa della Palombella, established in the 16th century, sends a dove symbolising the Holy Spirit along a cable across the cathedral square to set off fireworks; animal-rights groups long protested, and since 2005 the bird has travelled inside a transparent tube rather than tied to the emblem. The following Sunday the riders of the town's two old districts compete in the Palio dell'Oca in Piazza del Popolo.

The town's art is concentrated in and around the cathedral: the work of its architect Lorenzo Maitani, Luca Signorelli's Last Judgement in the Chapel of San Brizio, whose decoration Fra Angelico had begun and left unfinished, and the bronze doors finished in 1970 by the Sicilian sculptor Emilio Greco, whose work fills a museum beside it. Orvieto has a long ceramic tradition reaching back to the black Etruscan bucchero ware, fired without oxygen, and a 15th-century kiln survives near the Pozzo della Cava. Each winter the town hosts Umbria Jazz Winter over the New Year.

About 19,000 people lived in the comune of Orvieto in 2025, but fewer than 3,000 of them live on the rock itself. Most live in the newer settlements below: Ciconia, the largest, Orvieto Scalo around the station, and Sferracavallo. The old town has become a place of shops, restaurants, museums and holiday rooms, busy with day visitors from late morning and quiet again at night, while daily errands, schools and most housing are on the plain.

The economy rests on tourism, public services and the countryside. The white wine of the Orvieto district, grown north-east of the town, is highly prized, and red wines are made too. The population has fallen gently since its peak in the 1960s, a pattern shared by many small towns in Umbria, as young people leave for larger cities.

The day follows a familiar Italian rhythm: coffee standing at the bar, a long lunch, shops reopening in the late afternoon and an evening stroll along Corso Cavour, which fills with residents once the tour groups have gone.

Orvieto is above all a wine town. Orvieto DOC wines are mainly white, made largely from Grechetto and Trebbiano grapes and sold as Orvieto and Orvieto Classico, the latter from the historic zone around the town; enotecas across the centre pour it, and a sweeter style, amabile, is also made.

The cooking is Umbrian, with many dishes boiled or roasted with local olive oil and herbs. The black truffle, tartufo nero, is a typical product of the region, and strangozzi are a long, square-sectioned pasta of flour and water. Torta al testo is an unleavened flat bread cooked on a round iron griddle, the testo, and porchetta, roast pork that in Umbria is stuffed with wild fennel, garlic and pepper, is sold from white vans, especially on holidays. Lentils are among the region's traditional products.

Restaurants and pizzerias line Corso Cavour and the lanes around Piazza del Popolo, wine bars cluster near the cathedral, and gelato is eaten on the cathedral square on summer evenings.