Ali – After the fall of the Roman Empire, there were dark days for the former Romans, who were harried and pillaged by roaming barbarians (and before you let your stereotypes of barbarians run away with you, I think these were mostly Germanic types so blond, blue eyed hunky dudes in metal hats). So what’s a Roman to do? Run to the hills and build a big fat wall all around your city-state. Et Voila! The Italian hill towns are born. Now I know you won’t be surprised to learn that Rick Steves has a segment on the hill towns, which are located in Umbria and Tuscany. All of the towns are ‘medieval’, which means they have that ‘we just got toilets yesterday!’ feel.
We chose the town of Orvieto to visit, which is in Umbria and relatively easy to get to unlike Civita di Bagnoregio. A two hour train ride from Rome and then a funicular 
and you are there. Once you get to the town, the view is astounding looking out over the vineyards and rolling green hills.
Now there’s not a ton to do in these places as they are literally walled off from the world, but Orvieto has a couple really cool sites… and by a couple I mean exactly 2: the Duomo and St Patrick’s Well. The Duomo is a giant cathedral that decided to dress in stripes, which honestly makes its butt–resses look big. Get it? Butt–resses?
One of the chapels has some cool frescos by Luca Signorelli, who was apparently one of Michelangelo’s inspirations. If you are a fan of naked people in biblical scenes, then you will love these frescos.
Saint Patrick’s well is hill dwellers answer to the water problem. It was designed in the 16th century with a double-helix pattern so that folk going up didn’t bump into folk going down. It’s a total of 496 steps up and down.
So now you have visited the two sites in Orvieto and you still have 1.5 days left out of your 2 day stay. What do you do? Well it’s Italy so the easy answer is eat through the next 36 hours. Our favorite was the Grotte del Funaro, which was located in a cave. Not a lot of view but pretty darn cool.
So that’s about it folks. Our airBnB was right next to the primo sunset viewing spot and we did a lot of sunset gazing, which isn’t a bad way to spend your evenings, as the best thing about these towns is the view.
