Tuesday, 17 October, Orvieto's Duomo and a recital in Umbria, Posta Donini

Written 7 February 2024

Tuesday morning, we left Rome for Orvieto, but before we got to the bus, the W found two more ways to astonish me, one humorous and the other seriously cool.

First, arriving in the dining room for breakfast, we found the hostess—a tall, slim, elegant young woman—wearing spike heels with what were clearly pajamas. Brightly patterned in pink, red, black, and silver, and probably silk, but pajamas. On the way out of the hotel, I spotted the display case just off the lobby offering said pajamas for sale (note all the W's worked into the pattern). Later, I checked on line, curious about what they would charge for them. At the WHotels Store site, I didn't find the pajamas, but I was reminded that you could also order an item prominently displayed in each bathroom—a white cloth bag with a drawstring top emblazoned "backup plan." A little window cut in the bag revealed the spare roll of toilet paper inside. Honestly, how can these people expect anyone to take them seriously?!

But the lobby restrooms went a long way to changing my opinion that all their designers wore squeaky red noses and big floppy shoes. This handsome angelwing begonia sat on the white marble counter beside the sinks, but the sinks themselves were stunning.

They were apparently hewn from a single block of marble. The right-hand photo gives a closer view of one of them. I'm sure the maids who have to clean the rough marble surfaces curse the designers daily, but I don't even care if they were actually formed in a mold and made of Corian—the effect is gorgeous.

Soon we were in the big bus and on our way to Orvieto to visit its duomo, i.e. cathedral. Anna provided us a fact sheet on each region we visited—Sorrento and Pompeii are in Campania, Rome in Lazio, and Orvieto in Umbria. Umbria is Italy's the only land-locked region, but it has a lot of standing water and rivers. Its capital is Perugia.

Along the highway, we passed several of these hill towns, built on mesas for defensive purposes.

As we drove, Anna lectured on the history of the area. Various pre-Roman peoples occupied it—Umbrians, Tuscans, Etruscans—. They were concentrated in the areas now named after them, but Umbria, the umbrians, Tuscany the tuscans, but they overlap broadly and tended to built their settlements on hilltops. Some buried their dead, some burned them. We know most about the Etruscans, from their necropoli. The Etruscans (and the Chinese, it turns out) already had arches, but the Romans were the ones to figure out that you could rotate and arch around its keystone to make a dome.

The Romans displaced the Etruscans and took over the world for a good while. Then the the brbarian tribes came down from the north to conquer Rome (by cutting off its water supply, remember). In the resulting power vaccuum, the church took over directing the lives of the people. (That, said Anna drily, was called the Dark Ages.)

Bloody battles with the barbarians as well as between different settlements, over ecopolitical ideas. The church favored self-made people, whereas the Holy Roman Empire suported the aristocracy and inherited wealth, the feudal system. Towns started building defensive walls, and the rich built towers to protect themselves.

Then the plague.

It was all abut Jesus, so there was a wave of construction of new churches, often with materials from pagan temples. Monasteries flourished. Pilgrimages began—one started in England an came all the way to Rome.

Then, of course, a rest stop at another of those amazing Autogrills. In the left-hand photo, toys: trucks and race cars on one wall and dolls, toy jewelry, and make-up kits on the other.

Back on the road, the lecture continued: Orvieto is only a mile long and half a mile wide. Around 400 to 100 thousand years ago, volcanic eruption formed the rock it stands on. Aside from the volcanic tufa that supports the town, the stone there is of two types, a very crumbly brown stone and a crumbly powder, pozzolana (aka the powdery soil for concrete is pozzolana (aka Orvieto ignimbrite), which makes very good mortar. Tufa quarries have left 1200 caves beneath the plateau. The city had no walls, because the hilltop location was its defense.

Originally, it was an Estruscan city, part of an Etruscan confederacy. In 364 BC The Romans finally conquered it, destroyed the city, and deported the natives, so until the 5th century AD, the top of the rock was unoccupied. The name "Orvieto" is a corruption of the Latin "urbs vetus," old town. Eventually people moved back up here for defensive purposes, and by the 12th century, it was a political, religious, and commercial center; its three main squares reflect those three concerns. I boasts a bishop's resident and three papal palaces; five popes lived there.

The tight quarters on the hilltop allowed no room for our large bus up at the top, so we pull into the parking lot provided for the purpose and were met by a couple of little red 16-passenger tourist “trains,” which shuttled us up onto the high plateau occupied by the town.

At the top, on the main square in front of the cathedral was Maurizio's Tower, topped by a bronze clock, with a jack that hammers a bell to mark the hours. It was the clock for the worksite during the cathedral's construction and was the first workplace clock in Europe.

The cathedral is justly famous for its unique, lavishly decorated façade. Across the bottom, flanking the doors, amazingly detailed stone bas-reliefs narrate incidents in the life of Christ. Above, mosaics depict other religious themes. Anna assured us that it would appear to greater advantage later in the day, with the sun shining directly on it, but I find that the colors showed up better in my initial photos, less brightly lit.

The left-hand photo shows a little of the mosaic work close up, where it snaked down the columns to eye level.

Here are a couple of views of what our local guide called the "picturebook" panels, the carvings on the façade that show scenes from the life of Christ. You can make out the plexiglas shields that now protect their lower edges from the grubby fingers of the hordes of passing tourists as well as the devout.

The rest of the outside of the building, and much of the inside, is zebra-striped with bands of white travertine (like that the colosseum was built of) and dark basalt.

In the left-hand photo, you can see the plexiglas shields on the façade, giving you a better sense of the scale of the picturebook panels, which continue up the building to the cornice above the doors.

Our guide explained that the four bronze statues above the picturebook panels are animals representing the four evangelists. The mosaics above those depict highlights of Mary's life. Lace is produced in Orvieto and apparently drew inspiration from the stonework araound the rose windows. The 52 faces framing the rose window are saints. These numbers recurred—4 evangelists, 4 seasons; 12 apostles, 12 months; 52 apostles, 52 weeks.

The bonze doors are replicas made by a Greek foundry in 1962; the originals are safely stored inside.

Inside, the guide showed us both traces of ancient painted decoration and more complete decoration on the ceilings. The paintings in one of the side chapels were begun in 1447 by Fra Angelica, but most of the work was done 50 years later by Luca Signorelli. The latest renovation was 35 years ago; the chapel was closed for 9 years.

The church, crypt, and cloister house pre-Napoleonic tombs. In the very center was the common tomb for infants.

In the stained glass windows (which I didn't get good photos of), the red panels depict the prophets and apostles, the blue ones episodes in the life of Mary.

At the rear of the nave is the organ, described to us as the "second largest," with 5000 pipes. (Second largest in Italy? In the world? In this building? I can't keep straight in my mind where 5000 pipes would fit in the array of huge organs we've been shown and heard bragged about.) I think the guide said it dates only from 1950.

Inside, we also saw this beautiful Piet´ by Ippolito Scalza. It was finished in 1579, hewn from a single block of marble, exactly 15 years after Michelangelo died (and 80 years after the Pietá in St. Peter's; although Michelangelo did visit the cathedral, to study the paintings in one of the side chapels.)

grouping includes not just Mary and Jesus but also Mary Magdelene and a workman equipped with the tools used to bring Jesus down from the cross. The latter is a self-portrait of the artist, but the identity of the historic figure he represents is in doubt. It could be Nicodemus or maybe Joseph of Arimathea.

Written 8 February 2023

Orvieto cathedral's real claim to fame, though, I only pieced together as I wrote this diary page, from my notes on the guide's rather disjointed account (perhaps it was clearer to the Catholics in the group) and some research on the internet. It seems that in 1263 a German priest named Peter was sorely troubled because, although pious and devout, he could not bring himself to believe in consubstantiation (that's what she said; did she really mean "transubstantiation"? These were Catholics, right?). He decided he needed to travel to Rome to pray for guidance at Peter's tomb. On the way, in the Italian town of Bolsena, he celebrated mass, and when he consecrated the host, it began to bleed, dripping through his fingers and staining the altar cloth. Nonplussed, he at first tried to ignor it but then gave up, interrupted the mass, and said, "Take me to the pope!"

The pope, Urban IV, was living in Orvieto at the time, and he was sufficiently impressed that he declared a miracle, instituted the annual Feast of Corpus Christi (second Thursday after Pentecost; Thomas Aquinus wrote the office for it), and set about building the Orvieto cathedral to house the stained cloth. Construction began in 1290 and took 150 years (the façade took 300). It coordinated the romanesque and gothic styles.

The amber glazed windows are alabaster, added in the late 1800's, during a great renovation. For centuries the inside was richly decorated with statuary and painting, but it was later removed to restore the original empty appearance (the marbles only came back 40 years ago).

The stained cloth (called the Corporal of Bolsena) is only exhibited four times a year, and as you can imagine, the Feast of Corpus Christi is a very big deal here, with huge crowds, processions, people in costumes, parades, etc.

After the cathedral tour, we had some time to walk around the town and shop. We peered into many picturesque little streets and alleyways, passed an inn bearing a plaque saying that Sigmund Freud stayed there, and admired the local ceramics (but not enough to buy any). This region is the other major Italian ceramics center. As on the Amalfi coast, lemons and olives were common themes, though here I saw more pomegranates, sunflowers, and paisley-like acanthus-leaf motifs. And as Anna had predicted, some were decorated with "grotesques," fanciful creatures with mammal heads but fish tails, feathered dragons, etc. the smaller pots in the left-hand photos are good examples, but probably too small to see here. Those motifs were inspired by the use of grotesques in some of the ceiling paintings in the cathedral.

At the designated hour, we reconvened at the designated trattoria (La Grotta) for a set-menu lunch.

It started with a vegetarian lasagna and some penne all’arrabbiata (left).

Next came veal chunks braised with carrots, zucchini, and eggplant.

With the veal came a side salad.

Dessert was a two-layer chocolate and caramel mousse, dusted with cocoa and drizzled with more chocolate. Yummy.

Then more free time before catching the little red trains back down the mountain to our bus for the trip to our accommodations for the next two nights: The Posta Donini 1579, a former country estate in an area of Perugia called St. Martin in the Fields, now a luxury hotel and resort.

On the drive, we passed fields of lentils, small-leaved legumes that I would have taken for lespedeza or luzerne. Anna told us spelt is grown here and used heavily in soups. The Etruscans apparently ate spelt, as well as barley and bulgur (parboiled and dried cracked wheat). We also saw vineyards and olive orchards. Anna said this is good black truffle country and abounds in game, including wild boar, rabbit, and deer; Umbria is meat-eating territory.

When the bus pulled into the parking lot of the Posta Donini, we piled out of the bus and strolled around the building to the main entrance. In the artist's rendering at the left, the parking lot is the square white area at the upper left, and the main building, where our rooms were is the largest and tallest building and also the closest to the parking lot. The wooded area at the lower left (just below the parking lot) is the "parco botanico," a large courtyard planted with carefully labeled specimen trees. You can see a few of them in the right-hand photo.

While we checked in, porters were busily bringing our luggage around in wheelbarrows and putting it in our rooms. The rooms were very well appointed. The minifridge was stocked with complimentary sparkling and still water, Coke, and oranage juice, and the ice bucket was already filled with ice. Clearly the proprietors were tea drinkers, though. Each room had an electric kettle and tea service, but the only coffee provided was instant Nescafe. And strangely, most of the electrical outlets were of a kind I'd never encountered before and wasn't equipped to use (but I made do).

Once we were all settled in, we reconvened downstairs for a tour of the building's historic rooms, culminating in a chamber concert.

Several of the rooms were decorated with elaborate wall paintings. My favorites were these panels featuring still lives, mostly of fruits and flowers (but note the domestic animals and musical instruments that show up in some of them). I especially liked the lucious-looking watermelon at the bottom of the central panel.

The music room was also richly decorated. The concert was made up of works by by Italian composers, mainly from operas and films, performed by a pianist, a violinist, and a soprano. The only photo I got of the violinist is the one at the left, before we sat down—that's her in black and white in the far background.

In the right-hand photo are the pianist and the soprano. The latter is a local music teacher, and the others are among her students. I'd say the local standards are pretty high!

From the music room, we were guided back downstairs to cocktails in the conservatory, which doubles as both the bar and the breakfast room, before strolling (all indoors) over to Pantagruel, the hotel’s destination restaurant, for dinner.

We both started with one of the evening’s specials, oversized green (basil colored and flavored) tortellini stuffed with herbed ricotta and served with a fresh sauce of heirloom cherry tomatoes and olives and topped with grated cheese.

My main course was this handsome (and tasty!) grilled fish. I confess I don't remember what kind, but I think maybe turbot.

David sent for duck again, with roasted potatoes.

His dessert was the "pistachio kiss," layers of pistachio cake with various fillings.

I think I got the best of dessert with this handsome (and extremely delicious) "black forest cake" made with Amarena cherries. Yum. I love Amarena cherries.

Only one party in our group had trouble in the night. When they arrived in the room, they opened the windows to take photos, not realizing that doing so turned off the AC. The room quickly heated up, so they left the windows open to keep the heat down. As a result, they woke up in the morning covered with mosquito bites, while the rest of us slumbered, with closed windows, in air-conditioned comfort.