Orvieto Travel Forum

Hello - I've found several street maps for Orvieto. How far is it between
the funicolare to the duomo area? Would enjoy walking the upper town if not too far. Thanks.

It's been a long time since I've been to Orvieto, but I remember it well... We walked the entire village looking for a place to stay. Six of us showed up looking for a place to stay only to find a Ferrari convention going on! The piazza was filled with res Ferraris! It was a beautiful sight!

You can walk from one end of Orvieto to the other in about 20 minutes - not that you would want to! You need time to pear in alleys and windows, duck into the Duomo and stop for a glass (or bottle) of their most famous export - Orvieto Classico. Oh I want to go back!

We ended up finding a room for 4. The 2 left out (a couple in love) ended up sleeping on some straw in a barn, with blankets and pillows "borrowed" from the hotel, just of the parking lot in the lower town!

Have fun - I'm jealous!

That should have RED ferraris! (Beautiful!)

Wow... I'm really off tonight! That should have been peer in windows... I'm too excited thinking about Orvieto!

Sounds like that was fun! For me, it's the Orvieto Abboccato, a less dry version - not sweet, you understand, but less dry...yum yum yum...

The funicular wasn't running when I was there so I took the bus up from the station, but if I remember about where the funicular hits the upper city, it can't be even a kilometer over to the Duomo, so 12-15 minutes max....unless, as noted, you get distracted ;-)

"Would enjoy walking the upper town if not too far." Unless you have a walking impediment, there is no reason not to wander all over town. The whole upper city is an oval, just more than a kilometer longways and just more than half a kilometer on the narrow side...

Bill

I recall it being about 10 minutes walk, and that was carrying luggage.
The nice thing about strolling the upper town is that it's mostly fairly level, so you get the reward of wonderful views without paying for them with hard climbs like in so many other Italian hill towns.
BTW, the local cuisine is sensational, and worth splashing out a bit for.

Can't wait for our drive through Umbria and visit to Orvieto. Thanks to everyones comments I'm now hungry and thirsty. Don't worry about the spelling errors....I'm the queen of typos. Is Orvieto pronouced with three or four syllables?

or-VYAY-to. 3 syllables.

Isn't it 4? Or-vee-et-oh... accent on the et. In Italian you pretty much say every letter.

In principle this is true. In practice, it has always sounded elided to my ear.
In either case, the emphasis is on the 'e'.

As dnw says, the 'i' before an 'e' often turns into a 'y' sound (the 'glide'). In this case, however, I find myself pronouncing it with 3.5 syllables, with the 'i' as a vowel very short, and then a semi-glide into the 'e' (which is, indeed, stressed).

I think the presence of the 'v' makes it difficult to convert the 'i' totally into a glide sound...anyway, don't say 'or - vee - ay - to' with equal stress, but 'or - v[ee] - yay - to', where the v[ee] is not emphasized (and, of course, the 'yay' is not pronounced with the 'aaaeee' that we English speakers do, but as a proper closed 'e' sound in Italian).

Bill

Oy - vay, I'm confused!!!! Chances are I will never say Orvieto out loud.
This thread has gone quite off the topic. Thanks anyhow.