Orvieto

A Texan woman we met in Spello told us to visit Orvieto, so for our last day at the lake, we decided to take the train over there. Interesting town, but I forgot my camera, so no photos to share. But Michele bought a postcard that I shot and have added it to the blog so that you can at least get a glimpse of the duomo. Not much to report really except that it's like a lot of the towns in the region and was built high on the hill. So, to get there from the train station, we needed to buy a bus ticket for 1 euro which included a ride in the funicular straight up the long steep hillside before transferring to the bus which copleted the climb to the summit. We walked slowly back down to the funicular visiting the town in a very brief fashion. Of particular interest in the town's history is the time when Rome was being sacked in the mid 6th century and the pope and other nobility decided it was time to high-tail it out of town to find a place a little safer to live. The pope commissioned the building of a palazzo there, and in order to ensure that the town would have an adequate water supply, they dug a well 53m deep and constructed a double spiral staircase (ie two spiralling walkways which ran parallel down the inner walls of the well but never intersected each other). They used donkeys to haul the water up. Not sure how they kept the donkey's business out of the water, but it surely must have been a concern.