Orvieto Hotel Kristall

The Moro Tower

At the end of the 1200s the Medieval city state of Orvieto, in its period of maximum economic power and political stability, moved the symbols of power into the most representative public buildings of the city, restoring the ancient Palazzo Comunale and rebuilidng Palazzo del Popolo and the cathedral. The new urban plan, result of the restoration of the pre-existing buildings, placed in a strategically central position the Palazzo dei Sette with the tower known as Pope Tower, 47 meters high and orientated almost perfectly with the four cardinal points. Its impressive dimensions allowed a view that overlooked what at that time was the vast territory of the state of Orvieto. In the XVI century the tower was renamed as the Moro Tower almost certainly by Raffaele di Sante, known as “Moro”, who gave his name also to the lower Palazzo Gualtiero, his own property, as well as to the entire quarter.
In 1865, at a height of 18 meters, was collocated the distribution tank of the new aqueduct. After the restoration works of 1866, the mechanical clock was installed with two civic bells. The smaller bell came from the Saint Andrea’s Tower and the bigger one from Palazzo del Popolo, where it had been since 1313. In that year, by order of the Capitano del Popolo Poncello Orsini, it had been melt and remoulded impressing all around it his coat of arms and emblem, the symbols of the twenty-five arts and the seal of the people of Orvieto.