Tarquinia

Tarquinia was a very cool town with a mixture of Roman and Medieval ruins. It is also an Etruscan town which was awesome as I always found them one of the most fascinating cultures. They were very different from the other Latin tribes and there isn't that much known about them apart from their incredibly rich burials and early origin.

We took the train from Trastevere and then the bus to central Tarquinia. We then decided the first thing we needed to do was have lunch. We found a small Italian restaurant with some shade in the courtyard out the back and all had a variety of pasta meals. I had Carbonara. Here you can see our group for the day.

After our pleasant lunch we decided to find the Etruscan Necropolis. There were a huge number of tombs to descend into and some mounds that were not even excavated yet which was pretty cool. Most of the excavations took place in the 60's and therefore the moisture from all the tourists going to see the burials meant they were all sealed behind glass, so unfortunately we weren't able to go inside, however even the view though the glass was breathtaking. 

The Etruscans modeled their burial chambers around the houses they had during life, so there are often painted beams on the ceilings, and fake doors on the wall behind. It's also interesting how strong the Egyptian influence on their art was, Liz is doing her PhD in Egyptology at the moment so she had some pretty interesting stuff to say about that. 

The other cool thing was how one of the tombs had inscriptions; Etruscan writing is rare and comes only from burial contexts. I am also not sure if we can actually read them or not as their language was very different from Latin. Cool stuff. You can just see some writing vaguely on the right hand side of the door here. Also the door is cool because it's painted. Directly in the center the large hole descends with stairs into where the body would have been. 

The Medieval wall surrounding Tarquinia was also very cool. We stopped for photos. 

We then went to the museum which was also within the city, it was a very good museum but I also enjoyed the fact that it was within an old building in itself. Up on the highest walls there was also a good view of the city itself and the sprawling land beyond. 

What was once an old well in the central courtyard of the museum. We decided to do another group photo.

Within the actual museum were some very cool things. There were a large number of gold coins, pottery and sculpted sarcophagi with effigies of their owners molded on the lids. 

My favorite pot is this one because it's an apotropaic drinking vessel like we learned about in high school. This means when you lift the cup to drink and it covers your face, the eyes on the outside make it look like your still looking at people even when your face is hidden. This was meant to keep away evil influences and ward off the evil eye.