Tour at Etruscan Necropolis of Cerveteri

Industrious population of farmers, artisans, merchants,engineers and artists, the Etruscans established themselves in Northern Lazio between VIII° and V° century B.C., reaching the height of their power in VII century B.C.  In the Roman province they founded very important cities, as Caere, with its three harbours Alsium, Punicum and Pyrgi (partially corresponding to the actual Palo, Santa Marinella and Santa Severa) and Veio.   The ancient Caere was one of the most populated centres of the entire civilized world, also as a cultural and commercial pole able to contest, in alliance with Carthage, the control of the Tyrrhenian sea to the Greeks.  The annexation to Rome in 273 B.C., the Saracen raids and malaria, determined its abandon and the transfer of the inhabitants to Caere Nova, while the old city was renamed Caere Vetus, from which Cerveteri.   The city, at forty kilometres from Rome, founded on a spur of tuffaceos rock, still preserves the Middle Ages city fabric.   It is also famous for the good wine, already known and appreciated by the Etruscans and hence by the Romans.

During 1800 and mostly during the last century, the archaeological researches and the exhilarating discoveries of the Etruscan tombs in the numerous necropolis distributed around Cerveteri, started.   The Etruscans had a great respect for death and believed there was an afterlife: this is why they have left huge and suggestive necropolis, in which the tombs assumed the aspect of real houses, where the objects loved by the dead were gathered: ornaments, earthenware, perfumes and weapons revealing the high civilization degree reached by this population.

The Banditaccia monumental complex, the most important of the Cerveteri necropolis, extending for more than 90 hectares, is one of the most fascinating archaeological landscapes of the world and surely deserves a visit.   The main interest is given by the town-planning map of the city of the dead, clearly reflecting the one of the alive town.   The tombs are arranged along a main axis and are of  various kinds: the oldest are ditches of wells; of a subsequent epoch, the tumulus tombs, expression of the power and taste of the Etruscan aristocracy, dominating the contemporary politic, and then the dice tombs, with facades imitating the external aspect of the civil houses, testomonies of the distribution of richness in larger social classes if compared to the previous periods and of the rising of new middle classes.

Great part of the exceptional funerary outfits found in many of these tombs is mostly preserved in Rome at the Villa Giulia Museum, at the Vatican Museums and partially at the Cerite National Museum, hosted in the XIII century Stronghold of Ruspoli Palace, in the heart of the city.   Bronzes, bucchero vases (a typical Etruscan brilliant black ceramic), Greek and local ceramics, jewels and cinerary urns, may be admired at the Museum. 

 ETRUSCAN NECROPOLIS - P.le della Necropoli (Banditaccia resort) CERVETERI - phone: 069940001  Hours: from 08.30 a.m.  to one hour before sunset - closed on monday. 

CERITE NATIONAL MUSEUM - P.zza Santa Maria  Cerveteri  phone: 069941354 -  Hours: 8,30 / 19,30  closed on monday.