A caver with a headlamp inside a cave passage Under the ground

St Patrick's Well: two spiral staircases that never meet

Orvieto

Mules once carried water up out of this shaft, and the whole point of the design is that the ones going down never met the ones coming back up. You do the same walk on foot, both ways.

How the day goes

  1. In at the top and down the outer stair, with windows onto the shaft the whole way.
  2. The bottom, where a bridge crosses the water and the daylight is a long way above you.
  3. Back up the inner stair, which is the part your legs will remember.

It is stairs, down and then up again, with no other way round — if that is not the day you want, the caves under the town are level walking.

Where it is

Orvieto at its real position from Rome, with everywhere else we list behind it — so you can see how far out this one is.

Orvieto, and where it is from Rome Orvieto drawn at its real position relative to Rome, about 92 minutes by car. The faint dots are the other places we list, so you can see how far out this one is. 92 min Rome Orvieto

Open it where the roads are

Takes you to Piazza Cahen 5B, 05018 Orvieto (TR), the address the operator publishes.

Getting there

Getting there, the comfortable way

  • 1 h 32drive from the middle of Rome
  • 122 kmeach way
  • 1 honce you are there

  • Rent a car for the day

    The day stays yours: you leave when you want, stop where you want, and come back when the light goes.

    • You pick it up in Rome and drop it back in Rome
    • No timetable to build the day around
    • The stops on the way are the good part, and they need a car

    Affiliate link — you pay their price, never more, and they pay us. You book with Localrent, and anything about that booking goes through them.

    See prices on Localrent

  • Have a driver take you, door to door

    No parking to find, no wrong turns, and you leave when the day is done.

    • Picked up where you are staying, dropped back there
    • No parking to find and no ZTL to worry about
    • Nobody spends the day driving

    Affiliate link — you pay their price, never more, and they pay us. You book with Welcome Pickups, and anything about that booking goes through them.

    See prices on Welcome Pickups

Also around Orvieto

A caver with a headlamp inside a cave passage Under the ground

Orvieto Underground: the caves under the town

A guided walk through part of the man-made caves dug into the tufa rock under Orvieto, with cisterns, quarries and dovecotes cut into the cliff.

See the day

More under the ground

Stalactites lit inside a show cave Under the ground

Pastena caves

Walk into the hill on wet steps, in a guided group of no more than twelve.

€10 per person

Books on grottepastenacollepardo.it

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Cavers with kit bags in a lit cave passage Under the ground

Speleo-canyoning in a hidden cave

A trip that combines caving with canyoning progression techniques: you walk through underground chambers, cross fixed sections and rope traverses with a helmet, harness and head…

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A caver crawling through a low, muddy cave passage Under the ground

Caving in the Simbruini mountains

A guided visit to natural caves inside the Monti Simbruini park, wearing a helmet and head torch, through tunnels and narrow passages.

See the day

We have not verified this one yet. Everything below comes from the operator and we have not checked it — treat it as a lead, not as a listing.

Photograph by Sahityacm, Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0. Not this place: it shows what the day looks like, and will be replaced with the operator's own photograph or ours from the field.

Links marked affiliate pay us a commission — you pay the operator's own price and we never take your money. How we rank