Orvieto Cathedral

Orvieto's cathedral announces itself long before you reach it: the town sits on a sheer plug of volcanic rock above the Umbrian plain, and the church rises from its highest point like a gilded altarpiece set on a pedestal. It was built to house a relic. In 1263, the story goes, a priest troubled by doubt saw the Host bleed onto the altar cloth while celebrating Mass at nearby Bolsena; Pope Urban IV ordered a worthy home for that stained corporal, and Pope Nicholas IV laid the first stone on 13 November 1290. The building then took three centuries, reaching completion only in 1591.

The plan began as a Romanesque basilica, probably drawn by Arnolfo di Cambio, but in 1309 the Sienese master Lorenzo Maitani took charge, shored up the walls with flying buttresses and turned the project towards Gothic. His façade is the reason people stand in the square with their heads tilted back. Three gables are sheathed in gold-ground mosaic; at eye level, marble panels carry bas-reliefs carved between about 1325 and 1330 that tell the Bible story from the Old Testament to the Last Judgement in crowded, astonishingly fine detail. Above them Orcagna set the rose window, framed by a square of niches holding the twelve apostles and twelve prophets. The bronze doors are modern, finished by Emilio Greco in 1970.

Inside, the walls and round columns are banded in alternating courses of pale travertine and blue-grey basalt, so the nave reads like striped cloth under a painted timber roof. Two chapels flank the crossing. The Corporal chapel, built in the 1350s, still keeps the relic and is covered in frescoes of eucharistic miracles. Opposite, the San Brizio chapel holds one of the great painted cycles of the Renaissance: Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli began the vault in 1447, and Luca Signorelli, contracted in 1499, finished it between 1500 and 1503 with the Preaching of the Antichrist, the End of the World, the Resurrection of the Flesh and the Damned — a vision of the end of time painted with muscular, restless bodies.

Smaller treasures reward a slow walk: a Madonna and Child by Gentile da Fabriano from 1425, a Pietà carved by Ippolito Scalza in 1579, Gothic choir stalls begun in 1329, and a tall stained-glass window in the apse from the 1330s. And step back out into the square at least twice, in different light: the gold of the mosaics changes with every hour.

Getting there

The cathedral stands at the top of Orvieto; the nearest larger city is Viterbo, about 33 km away. The closest airport is Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi – Umbria International (PEG), roughly 53 km as the crow flies, though many travellers arrive via Rome. Orvieto station lies on the Florence–Rome railway, and a funicular climbs about 157 m from the station to Piazza Cahen in roughly two minutes; from there a short bus ride or walk leads to Piazza del Duomo.