Orvieto is a city and comune in Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff. The site of the city is among the most dramatic in Europe, rising above the almost-vertical faces of tuff cliffs that are completed by defensive walls built of the same stone called Tufa.
The ancient city (urbs vetus in Latin, whence “Orvieto”), populated since Etruscan times, has usually been associated with Etruscan Velzna, but some modern scholars differ. Orvieto was certainly a major centre of Etruscan civilization; the Archaeological Museum (Museo Claudio Faina e Museo Civico) houses some of the Etruscan artifacts that have been recovered in the immediate neighbourhood. An interesting survival that might show the complexity of ethnic relations in ancient Italy and how such relations could be peaceful, is the inscription on a tomb in the Orvieto Cannicella necropolis: mi aviles katacinas, “I am of Avile Katacina”, with an Etruscan-Latin first name (Aulus) and a family name that is believed to be of Celtic (“Catacos”) origin.
Some of the families traditionally associated with major roles in Orvieto’s history are: Monaldeschi, Filippeschi, Alberici and Gualterio, of whom only the Alberici and the Gualterio have survived to the present day. The city became one of the major cultural attractions of its time when Thomas Aquinas taught at the Studium. A small university (now part of the University of Perugia), had its origins in a studium generale that was granted to the city by Pope Gregory XI in 1736.
