Even her name has a sinister ring about it—Orvieto—the Old City. To the writers of antiquity she was Urbs Vetus, but no man knows her ancient name, and although archaeologists dispute in vain as to the rival claims of Herbanum and Salpinum, it is recognised that the origin of Orvieto is plunged in mystery. Unlike the other cities of Southern Etruria, built on the extremity of a peninsula of hills, she is isolated on a volcanic rock in the heart of the melancholy valley of the Paglia, an impregnable position, as many a Pope has realised with thankfulness as he fled to it for Sanctuary from the wrath of Emperors or the malice of Cardinals, or, more often still, the vengeance of the people of Rome. For Orvieto was consistently Guelf in her sympathies, and no less than thirty-two Popes have taken refuge within her walls since Adrian IV., Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman who ever sat upon the Papal throne, held his court there in 1157, because Rome had not yet forgotten the martyrdom of the heroic Arnold of Brescia.
BELOW THE WALLS OF ORVIETO.
We came to Orvieto by rail and scaled her precipice on the funicular, which connects the station down on the plain with the city on the rock above. If we had come by road, only a toilsome climb of several miles would have brought us to the grim Porta Maggiore, where Boniface VIII., in his twofold tiara, keeps watch from his niche above the gateway.
Does any city frown so fiercely on the traveller as Orvieto? The arch is gloomy and the road within is dark and steep. The sheer cliffs sweep to right and left like the pylons of an Egyptian temple, and above them peer fortified houses, squat and brown. This surely is the city named of Dis, which Dante had in mind, whose walls 'appeared as they were framed of iron,' upon whose gates the citizens looked down with ireful gestures!
Through this gate hastened the Popes, fleeing from wrath to come, and in their footsteps we toiled up the steep street between the same houses of yellow volcanic tufa gone black, which frowned upon the turbulent successors of St. Peter, who let down their nets, not for the drawing in of souls, but for the dragging in of wealth and the entangling of the feet of the unwary. Through dark alleys we could see the gloomy depths of caves, hollowed out of the living rock behind them: in the low bassi the citizens of this broken city toiled silently, and outside their doors sat hooded owls on poles driven into the stony ground. Here indeed were the Middle Ages, but not the Middle Ages of pomp and pageantry, of Gothic palaces and slim young knights in silken hose. There are some streets in Orvieto which look as though war had stalked through them only yesterday; as though the terror-stricken Ghibellines still cowered within doors, while the Monaldeschi rang bells in triumph, as they did on that fateful day in the year of grace 1312, when the Filippeschi had tried in vain to open the gate of the city to Henry VII. of Luxemburg.
ORVIETO: THE CLOCK TOWER.