Perhaps my very favorite medieval town in a walled city on top of a small mountain is Orvieto in Umbria. It’s only about an hour and a bit from Rome on the train, and well worth the trip. It has, among other things, a spectacular cathedral, equally spectacular food and beverages (including the famous Orvieto Classico wine) and lots of great shops. No wonder my alma mater UNC- Chapel Hill has a study house there. And you are about to see why I love this town. To get to it, you ride a train to the Orvieto and then you take a funicular to near the top of the mountain—-
The town has the small cobblestone streets the narrow winding lanes (indeed the road does a spiral around the town and up the hill. 
Even the pigeons have trouble getting up to the top of this hill.
Yes that’s a boar’s head in the window of the butcher’s shop, and yes that little boy is reaching out and petting the nice doggy which is really a stuffed boar.
There are lots of cool street scenes, like this lad playing the according, or you can go to the masque shop…..
Obviously there is great Italian food and wine in this town…here’s a nice trattoria Yuliya and I tried……
All of these towns have piazzas, or as we call them plazas… here’s what you see in the main one next to the cathedral….
But the main reason to go to this town is to see its remarkable cathedral…..which we will examine in some detail in our next post…
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