As mentioned in the parent gallery, Umbria is a region which straddles the Apennine mountains in central Italy. Its western border sits against the regions of Tuscany (Toscana) in the north, and Lazio in the south. Its eastern border sits against Le Marche.

Orvieto, a town of around 21 thousand, sits on a hilltop on the western edge of Umbria, about 1/3 of the way up.

This is yet another example of what is so frustrating about package tours. You go wide, hitting many places in little time, but you don't go deep. There is an Etruscan museum that would have been exceptional to see. There are underground tunnels in the volcanic rock, which would have been spectacular to see. There is a 62 metre deep well which was commissioned by a pope who took refuge here in the 1500s. We saw none of this; we wandered the streets for a pleasurable hour or so, found a nice place to eat, and were then back on the bus.

Space on the hilltop is obviously limited, and the town has spread out to the surrounding lowlands as well. To get up to the hilltop, you need to use a funicular cable car, of a type that is necessarily common in Italy.

I strongly recommend viewing any of these photos at their original size. I used Nuance Dragon Dictate to generate a lot of the captions which is accurate, but not THAT accurate. If you see anything odd, I may have missed sub-editing some of them.