Orvieto is just south of Chiusi and we were urged to visit it on our first day off, particularly for the cathedral. Everyone's seen cathedrals. Big, architecturally-rich monsters, with lots of paintings inside.

But this one was different.

Inside out, to be precise.

Here is the fabulously ornate front, where you can exhaust yourself trying to pick out all of the details.

Warily we moved inside, wondering if taking everything in might last the entire day.

And here's the inside, or most of it at least (the outside sides looked the same). This cathedral has a lot of its fripperies (I may get into trouble for calling them that but a better word is not coming to mind) on the outside and then a surprisingly simple inside, helped by chairs being set out in only half the space. The back half is wide open and it made it feel more cavernous and awe-inspiring, at least for me.

There is the altar area...

...which takes some staring too but is not as ornate as the front. There are also two side chapels – when we were there one was dark and in the other photography was strictly forbidden – which catch the light beautifully at the appropriate times of day. The one catching the light and in which photography was forbidden was fenced off and cost a few euros to get into. Our theory was that when the other chapel (opposite it) caught the light, the fences got moved and entrance into the second chapel was charged for while the first became free. Terrible scientists that we are, we didn't hang around to see whether this was true.

All in all, a place with something new to say about how a cathedral could/should look.

Orvieto is a lovely place. There's the new part, at the bottom of a hill and the old part, on the hill, ranging back to the medieval period. We spent the whole day in the old part, taking the 'cable car on tracks' to get up there (yes, Julia and JP in 'not choosing to walk there' shocker).

At the top we discovered a collection of alleyways that led us first to the cathedral, then to a wonderful ice cream shop where we discovered 'mirtillo' ice cream (that's myrtleberries in English, I believe) and a wood turning shop where we resisted the strong temptation to buy everything in sight – beautiful bowls, ladles, bottles, boxes etc etc.

Lunch was wild boar pasta. I had first tried this the night we had arrived in Italy – it's delicious. I had an interesting run-in with the waitress who brought us ¾L of water instead of the litre requested from the menu. When I asked why, she said that they had no litre bottles (fine) but that the price would be the same (not so fine). Apparently, as there is more demand for water in the summer, they cannot always get hold of the litre bottles they have on the menu. As I continued to look unimpressed, the waitress grudgingly suggested that she might charge us less for the smaller bottle. JP, having understood very little of this conversation was left with the “I should think so” that I barked, half at her and half at him, as she walked off. All ended well though as we were not charged the full price and we retired back to the ice cream shop to celebrate.

Unfortunately, there are no more photos to show you as JP was in a 'I'm only taking pictures of spectacular things' mood and Orvieto is not spectacular, cathedral aside, just very pretty. I shall therefore leave you with our other discovery of the day, which was the shop of an Italian artist called Verdirosi. His paintings sell for 600-15,000 euros but for us mere mortals, he also offers prints for 10 euros which is a pretty good deal. We nearly bought one but JP decided that he already has too much to take back to England when he returns in September so we contented ourselves with longing glances and a promise that we'll buy something from the website in the near future.

All the paintings come with poem-like explanations, somewhat wordy and, let's be honest, somewhat pretentious at times but the paintings themselves are wonderful. We were both drawn to several and had settled on two in particular...

The Game
The Journey