Medieval Hill Towns

Orvieto and Civitas di Bagnoregio

If you remember, Gary and I went to Lake Como for my birthday so Gary had to pick his place to spend his birthday.  He was thinking Barcelona for 3 days, or maybe Switzerland, or maybe the Island of Crete.  I think he was overwhelmed with choices and decided to do something local and Italian, so we drove to Orvieto (about 100 Kilometers from Rome) for a couple of days.
Upon arrival our first stop was the Duomo di Orvieto.  The byzantine architecture included tons of gold leaf on the face of the duomo as well as inside.

The interior columns were about 6 feet in diameter and very impressive.

Next we signed up for the cave tour which was a must-see!  The caves were originally carved by the Etruscans to access water from below the mountain instead of going to the river.  This was especially important when defending the city.  There are approximately 1200 caves but only 2 open for tours.  The rest of the caves are privately owned.  Many of the caves had pigeon-holes, for raising pigeons for food.  It was an economical way of a food source because the pigeons feed themselves.  The lower right hand picture shows an Etruscan shaft, which was built to access water.  You can see the foot holes the Etruscans used to climb up and down the shaft.

The caves stay at a constant 60 degrees year around, which is a perfect temperature to process olive oil.  You can see the giant wheel for grinding the olives, and the press for pressing the oil out of the olives.  The millstones were turned by donkeys who were also stabled in the caves.

The next day we went to Civitas di Bagnoregio, another hill town.  This town is only accessible by a foot bridge, no cars are allowed.

I love taking pictures of flowers!!  And Civitas had its fill of flowers, and spring has just started.  Just imagine what full-on summer would look like!

I really like this one of a camelia and a spider web.

After walking around Civitas, it was time for lunch.

If you are interested in seeing more pictures please visit my flickr page and click on the album for Orvieto, Civitas, & Radda (it may take a while to upload with our slow bandwidth!).