Orvieto: Live From The Moro Tower

A Bird’s Eye View of This Famous Etruscan City in Southwestern Umbria, Italy

High above Orvieto atop the Moro Tower, Tony Page gives you a bird’s eye view of this famous mediaeval city in southwestern Umbria, Italy. Populated since Etruscan times, it’s built above almost vertical cliffs and dominates the road from Florence to Rome.

“Okay, here we are on the Moro Tower, a long way and a lot of steps above Orvieto. And there you’ve got the cathedral. I’m just going to walk around this tower, panning around as we go and you can see what I see. It’s quite spectacular and I’m glad to say that in spite of 38C or whatever it was during the day, up here it’s now very breezy and a lot cooler.

Well, this is right into the sun now. And now I’m going to pan around. When I came up here – here’s Helen, playing Nelson “I see no ships!” and behind her is the bell. Now she’s fortunate because when I came up, at the very moment I arrived exhausted and came out onto here, the bell struck, approximately 6 ft behind me. And I can tell you, it is noisy!

(Helen: The square down there where the sun is shining is the main square.)

Here I go down, past the door and up again to the other side. Okay, so there we go into the main square and there is the holey (i.e. it has many windows) tower, which I haven’t been up. And there’s the main town hall I think you said. We haven’t really had time to orientate ourselves at the moment. This is lousy vision because we’re into the sun but it’ll get better as we go around.

Orvieto Is On A Volcanic Plug

As you can see, we’re up here on this volcanic plug. Orvieto is on a volcanic plug. It’s about 400 metres I believe, somewhere around 1,000 feet or so above the actual plain. It’s really not too far from Rome.

So here we go again – there’s the shadow of the tower. The black strip on the left is actually a street. As you can see the streets are really narrow. So I’ll just walk over into this corner and see if I can come in a bit on the (camera jumps) – oops sorry about that – I’ll if I can come in and hold it steady, on the actual Duomo itself. So hold on to your hat, here we go.

Amazing Coloured Inlay Work

Earlier on we saw the front of this and I have to say, it is amazing. Now, maybe you can get some impression of just how good it is from here. See this coloured inlay work. Earlier when the sun was shining on it it was brilliant. When you look at some of the shots they have in the gallery you’ll see. So there we are at the bottom. Let’s zoom back a bit and see if we can get some kind of an impression of the whole thing. Beautiful light and it is much cooler up here I’m pleased to say. You see how the cathedral is striped – it’s a dark green basalt and travertine marble and as you can see the roofs are very controlled around here. They are all exactly the same. Anyway, there we are.

Never-ending Steps!

It’s a bit difficult to get a shot into any street from here. But, I’ll try with this street to give you an impression of just how far up we are. You get a lift up two floors and then, I’ll count on the way down as to how far it is, but my God there are a lot of steps, they seem to be never ending and carrying our camera case made it harder. Anyway, let’s see if we can get anything down here.

Well there we are. So, there’s the people down there in the street. I’ll pull back and you’ll get an impression of where we are. That’s as far as I can get. This tower climb, if you have the legs for it, is well worth it, and it really is tremendous view up here. But you can see, I’ll zoom up, you can see right out into the distance. That’s about it for now, we have to struggle on and come down. See you again later.”

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