Day 352: Etruscan Necropolis

Day trip today, out of the city along the coast to the north-west. We were heading for the Etruscan Necropolis of Tarquinia - essentially a cemetery for Etruscan nobles, dating from roughly 700-300 BC. The Etruscans were a local tribe that were one of the dominant powers of Italy until they eventually succumbed to Rome.

It was a long journey out - a 15 minute tram to Termini, a 75 minute train ride, then a 15 minute bus ride into town. From there we needed another bus to the actual cemetery, but decided to walk the 20 minutes instead. But it was definitely worth it!

There's two spots for this world heritage site, and we'd chosen this one because the tombs you can see are richly decorated and that sounded more interesting than the alternative. And they definitely didn't disappoint! Lots of fantastic paintings on the underground chambers including banquets, hunting and fishing, music, dancing, fashion, animals, religious iconography like the doors of the underworld, and a couple of odd things as well like two men whipping a woman (in an erotic way), and a guy doing a poo (??!?).

All quite interesting, and we spent more time than expecting wandering around. The general area has thousands of tombs, though only a small percentage are actually decorated (ie, the tombs of the nobility aka people who could afford to decorate their tombs). But it was all very interesting and we were glad to have visited.

Unfortunately for us, the train only ran quite infrequently - every two hours! And we'd missed one. So after walking back into town and realising we had a 30 minute wait for a 10 minute bus, then another 30 minute wait for the train, we opted for a 45 minute walk down to the station instead. It wasn't a super nice walk but at least it was mostly downhill and gave us something to do!

Finished the long journey home around 6:30 after setting out around 9am - a long day for us, and a long day for our poor lonely dog as well. We'd left him at home under the impression that dogs weren't permitted in the cemetery, which unfortunately wasn't the case. But we didn't tell him that.

After a rest we headed out to a local Roman restaurant where we both had local pasta dishes (I had matriciana which is tomato, onion and cured pork cheek, while Shandos had the calci e pepe which is just pecorino and pepper on spaghetti), followed by a chicken cacciatore. Quite different to the tomato-based sauces we get here - this was largely done with olives!Read more