The structure
The well is entirely dug in the tufo litoide that constitutes the cliff orvietana; it has a depth of 36 meters the last of which occupied by spring water. The structure is constituted by two parts accorpate: the first one, greater, it has a circular section with a middle diameter of 3,40 mt, the second, smaller, it has a rectangular section of sides instead 60x80 cms and introduces the typical ones "pedarole" etrusche, or rather of the nick it engraved on the side walls to allow the descent and goes up again her/it.
To the depth of 30 meters it has beginning, inside the part to rectangular section, a tall burrow 170 cms around and that currently it has a length of around 20 meters; his/her fund, almost entirely covered of mud and clay, introduces a depth furrow on the left side that had to serve to make to flow the water of the well.
The superior part of the entry of the camminamento results engraved by to flow of ropes, you probably use for performing I dig him/it or to transport the water.
At the base of the burrow they are present five holes prepared to regular intervals along the cylindrical wall; he/she is thought could have entertained the truss of a base or a machinery to lift the water of the source.
position: fourth cave of the run
depth: visible from the second underground floor
year of the discovery: 1984
before opening to the public: 1986
in 2004 the great arc has been reopened on Street of the it Extracts that you/he/she had constituted the only access to the well for the whole Renaissance; the removal of the headstone waits for during the closing (happened in 1646, perhaps because of the War of Castro) you/he/she has brought a superb example of frieze to the light altomedievale, present on the back of the same headstone, now exposed close to the Well of the it Extracts.
The history
They are indeed many the centuries of history of the Well of the it Extracts, that has suffered in the time continuous changes. The side grit to rectangular section is etrusco and constitutes an essay of the ground performed for verifying some presence of the stratum acquifera before performing I dig him/it; you/he/she was englobed then in the real well. When in the 1527 Pope Clemente VII it ordered to dig the Well of St. Patrician, it made to also readapt this structure to be able to draw the water of the source from the street; the jobs were performed to expenses of the commune and they concluded him in 1530. It is alone of 1999 the discovery (effected from the researcher orvietano Lucio Riccetti following the recovery of a letter he/she autographs of Anthony from Sangallo the Young one) that the first well realized to Orvieto on commission of Pope Clemente VII was that of the it Extracts and not that of St. Patrician, as you/he/she was always believed until then.
The tufo extracted by the Well of the Extracts you/he/she would have been partly used for the construction of Building Pucci, other yard orvietano directed by the Sangallo. The well stayed open up to 1646, year when the town authorities ordered its closing, as it testifies a situated headstone on the street. As for the motives for this decision a popular belief wants that has been thrown you five official French that had tried to rape the women of the district. With every probability this hypothesis (brought by illustrious historians of end Eight hundred and of the first ones of the Nine hundred) must suffer a certain readjustment, putting the episode of the French soldiers to the beginning of the XIX century, in the period of the presence to Orvieto of the Napoleonic troops.
To confirm this second hypothesis is also a letter of April 1820 (of which a copy is exposed close to the well) in which the apostolic Delegate of Viterbo puts in watch the town authorities of Orvieto on the hiding of dead bodies really inside the Well of the you/he/she Extracts. The 1646 closing should be made therefore to go up again (as Alberto Satolli suggests in his/her book "The Well of the Fortress in Orvieto") to the period of the war of Castro, during which the whole street of the Extracts was turned into a fortification, walling up all the openings and the alleys that leaned out you.
The 1820 document, to which followed an answer of the Commune of Orvieto of August of the same year, the last official testimony of the Well of the it stays it Extracts. When, later more than one century of silence, in December of the 1984 Tersilio Sciarra you/he/she has rediscovered the well during of the jobs of restructuring, his/her depth it was only of twenty-five meters, the fund was obstructed in fact from earth and wrecks accumulated him in the centuries. Only the 1996 spring jobs have returned its native completeness to the structure.
