Last Minute Itinerari Orvieto

The wells of Orvieto

The Well of St. Patrick
At the end of Viale Sangallo opens there the entrance to the Well of St. Patrick, a bold work of engineering wanted by Pope Clemente VII after the Rome Pillage in 1527, when sheltering himself in Orvieto, decided to equip the city with constants water restocking allowing to not to leave the population dry even in case of had been set under siege. The well is deep 61 meters and large 13, with 78 openings that illuminate the run in both senses of march, toward the end and the surface. The two ramps drawn by Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane have a particular charm, each of them is composed by 248 steps that screws in a double helix in the same way as the structure of the DNA, knew only beginning from 1951. This shape was functional to allow the descent and the slope, also at the same time, of men and load animals without they cross along the run.

The Well of the Cava
The legendary well of Orvieto dug in Etruscan period and restored in 1528, more times closed and restored, owes big part of its charm to the suggestive hollows that emanate in the whole surrounding subsoil, revealing all the activities that are developed in its ravines during the centuries. The first room of the itinerary of the visit of the Well of the Extracts is composed by the open furnace discovered in 1985, turned in the centuries XIV and XV to ceramics laboratory. The second room is occupied by an archaic Etruscan grave, followed by numerous caverns and openings destined to the most varied uses as wine cellars, cisterns, burrows to make to flow the water. The places have recently furnished a lot of material recovered in the depths of the well, stratified in the respective Etruscan, medieval and modern epochs, visible in an itinerary rich in surprises.