What to do in Orvieto on our first Sunday in town? We had already determined the answer to that question the night before, so as soon as the outside air had warmed a little in the morning from the overnight cold, we set off on the three kilometre walk to the local cemetery. Getting there was an adventure in itself. First we had to find the escalator (who would imagine that a 1000-year old town on the top of a hill in Umbria would have an escalator?), and having found it, we travelled down through the solid rock until we emerged at the foot of the cliff face on the outside of the city wall with our destination in sight.
From there it was easy going, all downhill and on up the road to the cemetery entrance, where Deb stopped to ask Silvano (the friendly attendant) where the Jewish section was, knowing full-well that there was one, from previous research on a website called JewishItaly.com or some such thing. It’s fair to say that Silvano, however, didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but he did manage to connect with the word “Jewish” through her sketch of a Star of David on his writing pad. He immediately bundled us into his toy car and drove us at breakneck speed on a crazily zig-zagging narrow pathway to the top of the hill, where he proudly pointed at a very run-down little chapel, which may have been used for Jewish funeral services about 150 years ago, but the gates of which had clearly not been opened in a very very long time. The padlock was firmly in place and we had to use all our limited language skills to convince Silvano that he didn’t need to jump back into his toy car and drive back down the hill to try and find the key. What Deb really did want was for him to show us where the Jewish graves were, but despite wording the query every-which-way, we couldn’t make Silvano understand what it was we were asking. Charades didn’t help. Apparently the hand gesture for burial underground means something altogether different in Italy.
As we walked back down the hill through the cemetery, we couldn’t help but notice that all the burial plots (the first reference to the heading on this blog) were beautifully maintained and almost all adorned with fresh flowers. It was also interesting to note that a significant number of the plots (a further reference) were actually layered into the walls of the terraces, with only the end of the grave actually showing with the name of the deceased. There were dozens of people tending to graves, washing them down, sweeping and carefully decorating them with fresh flowers - on a Sunday morning in Orvieto, apparently if you are not in church, the cemetery is the place to be.
Sunday evening was a plot of a different kind. We had seen billboards around the town advertising a performance of Trappola per Topi at Teatro Comunale Luigi Mancinelli , which translated means the world famous play “Mousetrap” by Agatha Christie was going to be performed at the Mancinelli Theatre. The theatre was built in 1844, and is very reminiscent of La Fenice in Venice, with a beautiful hand-painted ceiling and four levels of semi-circular seating looking onto a very large stage. Our seats were in the nose-bleed section on level four, and we shared the little compartment with four lovely ladies, and we all enjoyed the performance very much indeed. Did I mention yet that the performance was in Italian? It didn’t matter – we had done a little research before we got there about the plot and the characters, and we were able to piece it all together so that afterwards we could have a meaningful conversation about the performance of the various players. I have to confess that I also knew whodunit, thanks to Wikipedia. A great night out!
D2
