Orvieto Cathedral

Orvieto Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral charges a modest ticket, and the Orvieto Carta Unica combines it with the underground city, St Patrick's Well, the tower and the local bus for about the price of three separate entries, which is the sensible buy if you are staying the day. The ticket includes the Chapel of San Brizio, which is the reason to come and which used to cost extra. Guided tours of the cathedral run in the morning and cost several times the ticket;

they are worth it for the frescoes, which are a complete theological argument rather than a set of pictures. Day trips from Rome take an hour and twenty minutes by train, then a funicular up the cliff, and are easy to do independently for the price of the fares. Tours sold from Rome cost many times that and usually add a lunch. There is rarely a queue. Combined tickets are sold at the tourist office on the square rather than at the cathedral door, which is worth knowing before you queue.

Visiting Orvieto Cathedral: what to see

Urban IV ordered the cathedral in 1290 to house the corporal of Bolsena, a linen altar cloth stained with blood during a mass in 1263 when a doubting priest saw the host bleed; the relic is displayed in its own chapel in a reliquary of enamel and silver. The facade is the most elaborate in Italy: a triple gable of gold mosaic, rose window, and four marble piers carved in the 1320s by Lorenzo Maitani with the Creation and the Last Judgment in relief so crowded and violent that visitors stand in front of them for a long time.

Inside, the striped nave leads to the Chapel of San Brizio, where Luca Signorelli painted the end of the world between 1499 and 1504: the preaching of Antichrist, the resurrection of the flesh, and a damnation scene of muscular devils carrying off the damned that Michelangelo studied before the Sistine wall. Fra Angelico began the chapel vault fifty years before Signorelli arrived, and the difference between the two hands is visible from the floor.

Orvieto Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to evening in summer, with a midday break and earlier closing from November to February, and the San Brizio chapel keeping slightly shorter hours than the nave. The facade faces west, so the mosaics catch fire in the late afternoon; that is the hour to be on the piazza. Orvieto is a hill town and the walk from the funicular station takes ten minutes, or a small bus runs to the square.

The Corpus Christi procession in June carries the relic through the streets with the town in medieval dress. Dress code is applied. Photography is not allowed in the San Brizio chapel. Allow an hour, and add the underground tunnels or the well if you have bought the combined card. Orvieto Classico is made in the vineyards below the cliff, and most of the enotecas on the main street pour it by the glass until late.