Located in southwestern Umbria, Italy, Orvieto is a small city of great antiquity, located on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic rock. The site of the city is among the most dramatic in Europe, rising above the almost-vertical face of cliffs that are completed by defensive walls built of the same stone. Its location is truly remarkable as Orvieto is a city upon a city, built in layers on the hillside – its medieval edifices rest upon ancient subterranean remains. In the 8th century BC, Etruscans burrowed for tufa (the volcanic stone out of which most of the medieval quarter is built), leaving behind an entire city beneath the ground surface. Six centuries later, Romans sacked and reoccupied the plateau, calling their “new” city, strangely enough, urbus ventus (old city), from which the name Orvieto is derived.
 Traces of every phase of history for the past three thousand years can be found in Orvieto, culminating in its magnificent Gothic cathedral, or duomo. The territory of Orvieto was under papal control long before it was officially added to the Papal States and remained a papal possession until 1860. In 1290, Pope Nicholas IV laid the cornerstone for the church’s present building, dedicating it to the Assumption of the Virgin, a feast for which the city had a long history of special devotion. The design has often been attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio, but the prevailing modern opinion is that its master mason was an obscure monk named Fra' Bevignate from Perugia. The church’s façade is particularly striking, striped in white travertine and greenish-black basalt in narrow bands, similar in many ways to the cathedral of Siena and other central Italian cathedrals of that era. In the following decade, cathedral authorities called Sienese architect and sculptor Lorenzo Maitani to stabilize the building and design a façade. The lively façade includes some remarkable sculpture by Maitani (14th century), who also enlarged the choir and planned a transept with two chapels (c.1308-1330), spaces that were not finished until long after his death. Inside the cathedral, the Chapel of San Brizio is frescoed by Fra Angelico and houses Luca Signorelli's masterpiece, his Last Judgment (1449-51).
The Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo is a simple building that still maintains an impressive grandeur. Work on the construction of the palazzo began in the 13th century on an area that had been occupied since 1157 by the Papal Palace built under the reign of Pope Hadrian IV. The original Palazzo del Capitano was a single ground floor that was used as a market place or for meetings, from which the magistrate would speak to the citizens. This was where the surrounding lords or representatives of vanquished cities came to pay their allegiance to Orvieto. The structure was enlarged within ten years of it having been completed and in 1315 the bell tower was added. From 1596 one of the lower section rooms housed the Studium, which had been re-instituted a few years earlier by Lorenzo Magalotti. Students of law, theology and logic came here to study twice a day, each time the bell of Palazzo del Popolo rung, until 1651.
 Orvieto is also home to the Etruscan ruins and remnants of a wall that enclosed the city more than 2000 years ago. At the foot of the butte, surrounded by peach and apple trees and a vineyard, the Etruscan necropolis counts a hundred or so chamber tombs. The city has long kept the secret of its labyrinth of caves, tunnels, wells, stairs, quarries, cellars and hidden passageways and rooms. The most spectacular of these subterranean burrowings is probably the Pozzo di San Patrizio, a deep well with a double spiral stair leading to the water source at its base. The underground city has yielded many historical and archeological finds.
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