Orvieto

Italia2009 traveled by the Regionale train south for one hour, disembarking at Orvieto. A cable car took us to the top of a tufa formation: the stone became wall, and the wall gave way to streets. We found ourselves in that once Etruscan stronghold of Orvieto. Orvieto, a pope's refuge: medieval winding streets that seemed to follow prior dictates that the Etruscans set down. The buildings are constructed of the same tufa upon which the city emerges: the blocks cut from beneath the buildings themselves leaving a labyrinth of caves.

We made our way down the Corse Cavour and turned towards the Duomo. Set down into a cavity within the city (a piazza) by the hand of a pope, the Duomo is a magnificent building. Along the edges of the piazza, we gathered to sketch, and then to explore: from each street, the view of the Duomo revealed itself as a jewel. But also: it began to reveal the authority of Rome and the violence and submission and politics and economics of the Medieval Orvieto. Even after lunch and visiting the caves in that lower, more primal city, and examining the Palazzo Popolo nearby, many of the students found their way back to the Duomo – drawn as if by some force to return to their study of its lines, of its mass, of its presence.