In 1499 Luca Signorelli signed the contract to finish a chapel that had stood half painted since 1447, the year Fra Angelico left Orvieto; in five years he covered it with the end of the world. The cathedral's first stone had been laid on 13 November 1290 by Pope Nicholas IV, who wanted one large building in place of the two churches already standing on the square. The original Romanesque design is attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio; Giovanni di Uguccione brought in Gothic forms, and from 1310 the Sienese sculptor Lorenzo Maitani gave the front the shape it still has. Maitani died in 1330 and the site outlived him by two and a half centuries: the last spires are Ippolito Scalza's, finished in 1591.
What to see
The facade is a three-gabled front sheathed in gold mosaic. Along the bottom, four piers carry marble reliefs telling the story of humankind from Genesis to the Last Judgment: the first and the last are Maitani's, the others by workshops whose names are lost. Above run a loggia of trefoil arches and then the rose window, cut by Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna, between 1354 and 1380, with fifty-two carved heads in its frame and the face of Christ at the centre; the spandrels hold Piero di Puccio's mosaics of the four Doctors of the Church. The three bronze doors are modern: Emilio Greco cast them and they were hung in 1970.
Inside, the walls alternate bands of pale travertine and dark basalt, and the aisle windows are closed with alabaster panes that keep the nave cool in summer. The chapel of San Brizio opens off the right transept: there Signorelli painted, up to 1504, the Sermon of the Antichrist, the End of the World, the Resurrection of the Flesh, the Damned and the Elect, putting Dante and the ancient poets in the dado among monochrome scenes. Opposite, the chapel of the Corporal keeps the linen of the 1263 Bolsena miracle in an enamelled silver reliquary delivered by the Sienese goldsmith Ugolino di Vieri in 1338. There are also the Madonna and Child frescoed by Gentile da Fabriano in 1425 and the Pietà that Ippolito Scalza cut from a single block of marble in 1579; the twelve apostles, taken out of the nave in the nineteenth century, went back to their places in November 2019.
Visiting
Orvieto sits on a tufa crag and the cathedral occupies its highest point. From the railway station on the Florence-Rome line, the funicular climbs to Piazzale Cahen, where a bus runs to Piazza Duomo; on foot it is about twenty minutes uphill. Entry is ticketed, the ticket is sold by the Opera del Duomo and includes the chapel of San Brizio, which is entered in small groups. Forty minutes is enough for the cathedral alone, an hour if you stop at the reliefs on the front; add the Museo dell'Opera and you have filled half a day. In winter the interior is cold and dark early: the apse window, installed by Giovanni di Bonino between 1328 and 1334, only reads properly in sunlight.
Our editors' tip
We go in the late afternoon. The front faces west and the mosaics were made for that hour: with the sun low the gold catches fire and the pier reliefs, flat and unreadable at midday, come back one panel at a time. Before going in we give ten minutes to the left-hand pier, the Genesis one, and look for the creation of Eve among the carved vines. Then the door: the jump from the gold of the square to the striped half-light of the nave is worth the ticket on its own.
