Interior view

The new cathedral in Orvieto was founded in 1290. By 1309 the first roof-beam was up. The new building was still Romanesque in form, round-arched, and anchored in a centuries-old tradition of masonic craftsmanship, and architectural ambition was expressed in terms of scale. The vast dimensions of the plan and great height of the nave led, at the crossing, to a need for vaults and arches of unprecedented height and span. No sooner were they going up than the authorities began to fear an imminent collapse and called on the Sienese Lorenzo Maitani for advice, who became "capomaestro" in 1310.

The original design of Orvieto Cathedral must be numbered among the greatest masterpieces created anywhere in Italy during the period of transition from Late Romanesque to Gothic architecture. The existing choir was begun only in the late 1320s, the extension of the transepts to create the present cruciform plan came even later. In the original structure the transepts were contained within the basic rectangle of the plan. The choir preceded the crossing, and behind the altar a single great apse gathered up the waves of lesser apses rippling down each flank.

In the nave the omnipresent, streaming motion of striped travertine and basalt stonework gathers force in the horizontal accent of the gallery. The latter is surmounted by a planar upper wall pierced only by the lancet windows.

View the ground plan of the existing Orvieto Cathedral.