Orvieto is said to be perched "halfway between heaven and earth", overlooking the Umbrian countryside. While the Duomo's facade is the most beautiful I have seen in the way that the sun reflects off the thousands of tiny colourful tiles, the reason my daughter and I ventured to Orvieto was to see the world below this quaint town.
From the train station a funicular carries you up to the center of town. While the train station was bombed during the second world war, much of the town was spared because of its distance from the train station.
Also spared was the the labyrinth of caves and the cisterns that were created by genius Etruscans some 3000 years ago, long before the term engineer was coined. Orvieto's underground world is literally riddled with tunnels and caves dug into the soft volcanic rock below the town. In looking at a town plan one sees that each house has its own cave.
Somehow my daughter talked me into exploring this underground world, despite that fact that I am claustrophobic, and I am afraid of poorly lit stairs since my fall in which I shattered my left ankle. Luckily for her, sometimes my sense of adventure outweighs my fear and anxiety. As we descended down stairs, which became less and less like stairs as we know them the deeper into the caves we went, role reversal took over with my daughter holding my hand talking me through my chest pains and the sense that my world was closing in. After slow deep breathing down the "stairs" I was actually okay when I saw the vastness of the underground world.
If one did not do research one would not know about the hidden world below this quaint town - caves that were used to process olive oil in, cisterns that provided water to the town at one time and caves that were used as protective bomb shelters. In many of the caves the walls were covered with dozens of small square niches. As we are in Italy it seemed reasonable for me to conclude that these niches at one time held wine or olive oil bottles....WRONG. Instead they acted as cozy houses for pigeons, which were a staple in the Etruscan diet many years ago. The pigeons over the years got wise to that although these caves protected them from the hot sun and the rain, they were actually death chambers for them. It seems the word has gotten out because although there are still openings for the pigeons to come and go, pigeons have not made their home in the caves for many years.
While I enjoyed our adventure into the roots of Orvieto, I was glad to emerge from the caves to the comparatively modern town where we enjoyed the sunset, a tasty plate of pasta and a glass of wine to calm my nerves. It was an adventure well worth a few chest pains.
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