Orvieto and Wine Tasting

                Today we visited Orvieto where there is a gorgeous Duomo called the Duomo di Santa Maria. The city is built on top of a hill which is basically rock so it was a very protected from invasion as it basically had a natural fortress. In the beginning of our visit we saw one of three ancient wells to the city; because it was built on top of a hill they somehow had to get fresh water. The well we visited today was approximately 60 meters down in to the earth.

After some of us walked down to the bottom of the well and back up (approximately 500 steps in total), we visited the Duomo. The Duomo is absolutely stunning; the front façade contains a large rose window, golden mosaics, three huge bronze doors, and many different statues. Because in the ancient times, many people were illiterate, the pictures that we see in the Duomo were how people learned the different religious stories. Not only does this Duomo have a gorgeous façade, but it is one of the few striped churches. The inside is just as gorgeous as the outside. One of the two chapels, called the Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio displayed five scenes from the Book of Revelations. There were frescos that displayed the scene of the anti-Christ, a scene that showed the end of the world, a scene that showed heaven, a scene that displayed hell and then a final scene that showed the resurrection of the flesh. The frescos of the chapel were originally started by Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, but they had to go to the Vatican to paint something for the Pope. They said that they would come back and finish the paintings, but fifty years later it was realized that they were not coming back. So from then on out, Luca Signorelli took over finishing the chapel. The frescos are some of the most perfect paintings of humans from the time. It is said that Michelangelo stopped in Orvieto to see the frescos of Signorelli so that he could paint the people in the Sistine Chapel with just as much talent that Signorelli had. They were really quite impressive paintings.

The second chapel in the Duomo had been constructed 100 years before the Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio; it is called the Chapel of the Corporal. This chapel is decorated with frescos depicting the history of the Eucharist and the miracles concerning the bleeding host throughout church history. This chapel contains an important historic reliquary to the church as well as the stained corporal of the miracle of Bolsena (hence the name the Chapel of the Corporal). It was really a gorgeous cathedral.

Orvieto was a cute and quaint town. Walking through the town there was beautiful ceramics that we saw. I wish that we had had some more free time there. After Orvieto we went to do a wine tasting at a local winery, Cantina Peppucci. There we tried some local wines which were very good (in my opinion). It was a nice way to end a lovely day.