It all began with a miracle: the blood-stained corporal of Bolsena, to guard which Orvieto raised from 1290 a cathedral that is a reliquary in stone. Lorenzo Maitani's façade — spires, golden mosaics, bas-reliefs — stands among the absolute peaks of Italian Gothic, and from that prodigy the feast of Corpus Domini was born for the entire world, instituted by Urban IV right here in 1264.
What to see
The façade at sunset, when the mosaics catch fire; inside, the San Brizio chapel: Luca Signorelli's Last Judgement (1499-1504), with its muscular damned and its Antichrist, which Michelangelo studied before the Sistine. In the opposite chapel, the corporal's reliquary, a fourteenth-century goldsmith's masterpiece. Maitani's pier reliefs — Genesis and Judgement — earn half an hour with your nose in the air on their own.
Visiting
The ticket covers cathedral and San Brizio chapel; ninety minutes is the right measure. Orvieto's combined card pays if you add Saint Patrick's Well and the underground city — and you should.
Getting there
Orvieto lies on the Rome-Florence line: from the station, the nineteenth-century funicular climbs the rock in two minutes, then five on foot or a shuttle to the cathedral. By car, park below the cliff and ride the same lifts.
Our editors' tip
Sit on the steps of the palazzo opposite half an hour before sunset and watch the façade change colour: a free spectacle the Orvietani have enjoyed for seven hundred years. Then enter for San Brizio once the groups have gone: with Signorelli's damned, it is better to be nearly alone.