Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta in Cielo

Orvieto's cathedral is the building the whole city was arranged to admire: a Gothic statement begun in 1290 for a pope-in-residence, wrapped in a mosaicked facade and frescoed inside with a Last Judgment that marked Italian painting.

Why it matters

The Opera del Duomo's own historians give the starting point precisely: construction began on 13 November 1290, in the presence of Pope Nicholas IV. The official account ties the project to a general replanning of the city, driven by the papal court's frequent stays on the tufa plateau — the commune needed a church equal to papal ceremony. A year later, in an indulgence letter of 23 August 1291, the pope recalled blessing the first stone and having it placed "with our own hands". The site had carried churches before: the old cathedral of Santa Maria de Episcopatu, known as Santa Maria Prisca, and the canons' church of San Costanzo both gave way to the new build. The official site describes the result as a pinnacle of Italian Romanesque-Gothic architecture, and it remains the monument by which Orvieto is recognised.

What to notice

Give the facade time before going in. Its tri-gabled form took shape from about 1310 under the Sienese Lorenzo Maitani; the archive keeps his design alongside an older, single-spired scheme from the end of the 1200s. The four piers beside the portals carry relief cycles in sequence — the Creation from Genesis, the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Last Judgment — described by the Opera del Duomo as a masterpiece within the masterpiece. Above, gilded mosaics narrate the life of Mary, and the rose window begun after Andrea Orcagna was called to lead the worksite in 1358 sets the head of Christ among fifty-two heads of saints, one for each week of the year. Inside, walk first to the Cappella del Corporale: frescoed between 1357 and 1364 by Ugolino di Prete Ilario, it protects Ugolino di Vieri's enamel reliquary for the corporal linen of the 1263 Bolsena miracle. The Cappella di San Brizio waits at the opposite end.

Context and history

The facade was architecturally complete only in 1532, and the finishing touches carried on past that date. The twelve apostles above the rose window came from various hands at the end of the sixteenth century, and the spires were completed by Ippolito Scalza in the same period. When the tympanum mosaic of the Resurrection, decided in 1584, deteriorated in the early eighteenth century, it was replaced with the Coronation of the Virgin now in place. The most argued-over addition is modern: Emilio Greco's bronze doors, commissioned in 1962 and delivered in 1964, were installed only on 11 August 1970 after long controversy about touching the historic monument; the sculpted central door shows the Works of Mercy.