Group Tour – Tarquinia and the Etruscans

Group Tour – Tarquinia and the Etruscans

• This tour will give you the opportunity to discover the wonderful landscape of Roman Tuscia and taste the typical products of this land.
  Tarquinia, the city of the Etruscans, of towers and churches tells a story spanning three thousand years.
  Between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, Tarquinia was one of the most flourishing and populated Etruscan cities.
  The hundreds of tombs of the ancient necropolis, dug into the macco and splendidly frescoed, bear witness to this.
• The itinerary begins with a visit to the Monterozzi necropolis in Tarquinia, unique for its 150 painted tombs, accompanied by our Etruscan-tourist guide. The small archaic hypogea, depicting scenes of banquets and symposiums, give way to the large noble tombs of the Hellenistic age.
  These large wall paintings are exceptional both in the quality of execution and in their content, which reveal aspects of the life, death and religious beliefs of the ancient Etruscans.
• The Monterozzi hill, about 6 km long and home to the main city necropolis, extends parallel to the Tyrrhenian coast, between this and the Civita hill where the Etruscan city once stood. The tombs practically cover the entire hill; more than six thousand are known, mostly chambers dug into the rock and surmounted by mounds. It is precisely the latter, now barely visible on the ground because they were flattened by agricultural work (but only a century ago there were more than 600), which gave the hill its popular and expressive name.
• The extraordinary series of painted tombs – we know of about 200 – represents the most prestigious nucleus of the necropolis which remains, in this respect, the most important in the Mediterranean, so much so that it has been defined by Massimo Pallottino as ‘the first chapter in the history of Italian painting’. The custom of decorating the tombs of aristocratic families with paintings is also documented in other centers of Etruria, but only in Tarquinia does the phenomenon assume such large and continuous dimensions: it is in fact attested from the 7th to the 2nd century BC, i.e. for almost the entire life span of the city.
• In the necropolis sector currently open to the public it is possible to admire some of the most famous painted hypogea, such as the tombs of the Lionesses, the Leopards, the Hunting and Fishing etc.; a visit to the so-called Scataglini necropolis, a suggestive corner completely excavated, also allows the visitor to understand how the “city of the dead” should originally have looked.
  We end the tour at an organic farm where you can enjoy a tasting of the company’s typical products, which will reserve us a final surprise.