Over a thousand underground rooms and room complexes have been discovered so far, dug in Etruscan times continuing right through into the middle ages. Your tour will visit two such complexes. In the first, you will see what may have been an Etruscan cave turned into an olive oil making operation and finally into a 17th century mining operation (for building materials).

In the second cave, you will go into the dovecotes. Pigeons were a big industry until the 17th century. These rooms access the cliff sides –- man made dovecotes carved out of the rock, accessed by stairs to the homes of the owners 30 or 40 meters above. Here is my "buyer beware", some of the cave passages are a little narrow but unless you have severe claustrophobia, everyone should enjoy them (particularly children).

The tour is a lesson in Orvieto’s history and man’s ingenuity. It was really good fun. . . and what a relief, not a religious artwork in sight.

On the other side of the church is another chapel which features a large reliquary on its altar. It was nearby that the event inciting the feast of Corpus Christi took place – a host began to drip blood, staining an altar cloth. The cloth is exhibited twice a year. . . I assume it is kept in the reliquary.

Other impressions are of a triple nave striped in Tuscan fashion. It has magnificent height – the ceiling has the look of wood beams and coffers but it appears to be stone. The frescoes of the chancel and the transepts are beautiful.

The rest? It’s actually fairly plain. Along the walls of the side aisles are window alcoves with plain windows. Between the alcoves are gothic windows, but only the upper parts are stained. The floors are an attractive red marble and the font is very large and ornately decorated in white marble, in other words, a handsome church, probably worth a visit on its own merits, but the Capella di San Brizio is a must-see in this small, Umbrian city.