Sunday, May 07 - Visiting Etruscan Necropoli - a happy circumstance
As we drove up the coast toward our destination in Tuscany, we stopped along the way at the town of Cerveteri, as I saw a sign for Etruscan Necropoli. It was an amazing find – a large outdoor park, with walking trails through the necropoli, which spanned prehistory and the Villanova area – from the 9th to 7th Century BC. The tombs are carved into the tufa rock, with underground chambers that you enter, almost like a small house. A few are large enough that they had interior carved pillars and capitals. From the outside, some of the most impressive are round, circular mounds with concentric rings carved into the tufa rock.
As we drove up the coast toward our destination in Tuscany, we stopped along the way at the town of Cerveteri, as I saw a sign for Etruscan Necropoli. It was an amazing find – a large outdoor park, with walking trails through the necropoli, which spanned prehistory and the Villanova area – from the 9th to 7th Century BC. The tombs are carved into the tufa rock, with underground chambers that you enter, almost like a small house. A few are large enough that they had interior carved pillars and capitals. From the outside, some of the most impressive are round, circular mounds with concentric rings carved into the tufa rock.
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| The town of Cerveteri - the horse is standing in front of a tufa mound that is an Etruscan burial mound |
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| This is a large cemetery city - burials occurred primarily from the 9th century BC to the first century AD |
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| In the later centuries, the Etruscans built large family necropoli, shaped in circles, that could be entered via carved stairs |
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| Earlier tombs were less ornate, but still carved into underground rooms |
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| Large urns, made from tufa rock |
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| The circular mounds were carved with decorative concentric circles |
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| Pilars and carved capitals on the interior of the underground mounds |
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