As you draw closer, you can make out the towers and walls that kept invaders at bay for centuries. To penetrate modern-day Orvieto, with its labyrinth of medieval streets, you need to jump aboard one of the pert electric buses that potter round the centre, or stroll up the steep cobbled lanes on foot. Aromas of cheese, olives and amaretti biscuits float out through the doors of inviting food shops and the windows of apartments. Elderly women stop to greet their neighbours in the lanes, and young businessmen stroll arm-in-arm, engrossed in discussion.Orvieto is not, however, just another charming destination where visitors sigh, vow to sign up for an Italian course, and discuss which quaint house they would buy if they won the Lotto. It is one of Italy’s four fully-fledged “Slow Cities”, and at the cutting-edge of a movement that wants to revolutionise the way people live.The “slow” label does not just mean long lunches and even longer siestas, nor a Luddite philosophy, nor nostalgia. Instead, it’s nothing less than a third-millennium challenge, a strategy to reduce the destructive rhythms of modern life, resist the global homogenisation process, and put the “human” back into human beings.The Slow Cities movement is an offshoot of Slow Food, a group that has grown from a club of Italian gourmets keen to save local traditions to a powerful environmental-gastronomic lobby whose philosophies are getting increasing play worldwide. Slow Food was founded by journalist Carlo Petrini in 1986 because he was enraged at the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome; now it has more than 70,000 members in 45 countries.

Petrini and his disciples claim that the ingredients, production, preparation and consumption of food reflect individual cultures and personal pleasure. Fast food, they claim, embodies the frenzied pace of modern life, allows no time for reflection, denies the social pleasure of eating together and kills diversity.As food scares, stress-related illnesses, allergies, and biotech nightmares have raised more and more questions about just why it is that we are rushing, slowing down is becoming an attractive alternative. It was probably inevitable that the Slow philosophy would move beyond the family dinner -table and the local trattoria to include wider issues of how we live.”This is a logical extension of our opposition to the homogenisation of tastes and traditions,” says Silvio Barbero, national vice-president of Slow Food. “Just as we don’t want teenagers the world over consuming Coca-Cola and hamburgers, neither do we want cities to erase or pillage their pasts. If the local butcher is replaced by a jeans shop, or the local farmers’ market folds because there is a hypermarket in the next town, towns start looking sadly similar,” said Barbero.The four original members of the Slow Cities movement were Orvieto; Greve in Chianti, nestled among vine-clad hills in Tuscany; Bra, the headquarters of Slow Food in Piedmont; and Positano, on the Amalfi coast. Since then, another 40 Italian cities have jumped on the slow train – though they are still waiting for the final stamp of approval.At their founding meeting in Orvieto in October 1999, the four mayors committed themselves to a series of measures that included increasing pedestrian zones; reducing traffic; cutting down noise pollution; encouraging restaurants that offer local products; supporting farmers who produce these delicacies; prohibiting genetically modified foods; conserving the local aesthetic traditions; and working to create more green space in their areas.They also pledged to use technology to create a healthier environment, to make citizens aware of the value of a leisurely approach to life, and, most importantly, to share their experience in seeking administrative solutions for better living.”Let’s clear one thing up first – Orvieto is a slow city not a backward one. When most of Italy didn’t know what an sign was, we had one fifth of Orvieto families connected to the internet,” explains the town’s exuberant white-headed mayor, Stefano Cimicchi, as he emerges from his office in a pink-and-white palazzo “Being a Slow City is a challenge.

We are not dreamers who want to create the ideal city, we are administrators who have to resolve problems. We want to create the conditions for people to live more fully.”In fact, the Slow Cities are also referred to as the Citta del Buon Vivere. In Orvieto’s case, going slow has meant further limiting traffic yet ensuring that by abandoning their cars, citizens are not themselves abandoned. There is a system of car parks on the edge of the historic centre, constant shuttle buses, and the council has just introduced another 1km of pedestrianised zone.

“After some initial grumbling, residents are now pleased,” he says. Cimicchi is particularly proud that his citizens have become active participants in the process. “I had a group of mothers come to me and say, if this is a Slow City, then shouldn’t our school-canteen menus reflect that? We now use organic products, with an emphasis on local dishes.”The gastronomic raison d’?e of Slow Food has heavily influenced the cities movement, and it goes without saying that fast-food outlets don’t get a look-in at Orvieto nor in any of its sister cities But living Slow also has a social dimension, too. Mayor Cimicchi has introduced orti sociali – communal allotments where locals can grow their own vegetables. “This is particularly important for elderly people as it keeps them active and alive, but also for mothers and working women and the younger generation, who risk losing touch with the land.”Keeping in touch with their agricultural past has not been a problem in Greve in Tuscany, in the heart of the Chianti wine- making region.