Cerveteri

Where Tarquinia painted its tombs, Cerveteri built them: the Banditaccia necropolis is a genuine town plan of streets and squares lined with tumuli, great drums of tufa capped with earth, each covering chambers cut to imitate a house with beds, chairs, roof beams and doorways carved from the living rock. The Tomb of the Reliefs goes furthest, its walls and pillars carved and stuccoed with household objects, weapons, tools and a dog, so the room reads as an inventory of a life. UNESCO listed Cerveteri and Tarquinia together in 2004. Much of the excavated material sits in Rome's Villa Giulia museum.

History

Known to the Romans as Caere, the ancient Etruscan city covered an area more than 15 times larger than today's town and was one of the city-states of the Etruscan League; at its height, around 600 BC, it may have had 25,000 to 40,000 people (Wikipedia, Cerveteri).

What you'll find

• The tumuli streets - a necropolis laid out as a town with roads and squares.
• The Tomb of the Reliefs - stuccoed household objects covering the walls.
• The carved interiors - chambers cut to imitate houses with beds and beams.
• The scale - hundreds of tombs across a wooded plateau.

When to go

April to June and September to October; the site closes Mondays. The plateau is shaded in parts but hot in midsummer. Allow around two hours.

Good to know

Many tombs are locked or fenced, viewed from the doorway. Most finds are in Rome, not on site. Ground is uneven with steps into the chambers.

Nearby

Tarquinia lies north; Lake Bracciano is inland.