Guest Blog
by Timothy Shea and Erika Weiberg
A week ago, while staying in Vetralla, Tim
and I decided to visit some of the less-trafficked sites in Lazio and Umbria,
regions of Italy once inhabited by the mysterious Etruscans. Like most
tourists, we had come to central Italy to visit the eternal city of Rome. As
graduate students of classical literature and archaeology, Tim and I spend a
lot of our time studying ancient Rome, and Tim wanted to see the big city for
the first time. While the Coliseum, the Forum Romanum, and the Pantheon are
breathtaking, our two days visiting sites in outer Lazio and Umbria opened our
eyes to the colorful burial rites of the Etruscans, an enchanting 16th
century garden, a dying city on a cliff, and the beautiful medieval town of
Orvieto.
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| Necropolis of Monterozzi, Tarquinia |
Day One
The first stop on our itinerary was
Tarquinia, an ancient Etruscan site with a series of painted tombs dating from
the mid-6th century to the 2nd century BC. Tim’s interest
had been sparked by the Etruscans, who had inhabited parts of modern Lazio and
Umbria since at least the 10th century BC, and he was scheduled to
give a lecture on these tombs to Duke study abroad students later in our trip.
We descended into the damp interior of
these wealthy
ancient Etruscans’ tombs, proceeding down long corridors to dead
ends at which we pushed buttons to illuminate the inner chambers of the tombs,
which are lined with vibrantly painted frescoes.
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| tomb of the jugglers, Tarquinia |
The frescoes, which would have
surrounded sarcophagi holding the tombs’ inhabitants, depict scenes of
banqueting and dancing, scenes with demons and mysterious fake doors, scenes of
hunting and fishing, and scenes of athletic games.
In the impressive museum
located in the modern city of Tarquinia, we saw the sarcophagi and grave goods
that had been found in these tombs. On the lids of the sarcophagi, the
Etruscans sculpted their dead family members in a reclining position, as if
dining; scholars suspect that the arrangement of the tombs, the lids of the
sarcophagi, and the paintings on the walls point to a conception of the
afterlife as a continuous, eternal banquet, surrounded by friends and loved
ones.
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| Bomarzo |
For our next stop, we jumped forward in
time to a similarly ethereal site near the modern town of Bomarzo.
Vicino Orsini, a noble prince of Bomarzo, had a “sacred forest”
built for his wife, Giulia Francese, in the 16th century.
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| Tim in Bomarzo |
The park
is strewn with fantastic sculpted creatures and monsters, which startle and
fascinate passers-by; as one inscription indicates, the layout and decorations
of the park are intended to liberate the spirit and startle the mind with
“lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!”
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| Fulvio and Erika in the slanted house, Bomarzo |
Terrifying giants lurk, beauties sleep in
corners, elephants rage, monstrous faces spook, and houses lean, destroying any
sense of equilibrium.
Day Two
The next day we set out on a road trip to
the fossilized city of Civita di Bagnoregio. Civita was built on a plateau of volcanic tuff that has eroded
drastically since the town was built so that now it can be reached only by a
bridge that snakes its way from the modern town of Bagnoregio into the heart of
the dying city.
We happened to go on a Sunday and a
holiday, so the town, which contains a mere handful of actual inhabitants, was
full of pilgrims from nearby towns and countries, who flock there to enjoy the
surreal landscape. Most walked across the bridge into the town, but some rode
motorbikes, and we even encountered a company of horses, who arrived just as
the town’s bell tower chimed noon.
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| horses in Civita di Bagnoregio |
The town contains several restaurants and
gift shops, but the real treat is to wander around the narrow streets and crumbling
houses and imagine that you are the last inhabitant of a dying town in a
magical, forgotten land.
After our hike to Civita, we drove along
winding roads into the olive and wine country of Umbria to visit another city
once founded by Etruscans, Orvieto.
The city is now a beautiful relic
of its thriving Medieval and Renaissance past, with one of the most fantastic
duomos we have ever seen. The facade of the cathedral dazzles with 14thcentury
sculpture by Lorenzo Maitani and walls constructed of alternating layers of
white travertine and greenish-black marble.
Inside, we noticed a portrait of Vergil that
often appears on Latin textbooks, painted inside the San Brizio chapel by
Renaissance greats Fra Angelico and Luca Signorelli.
Coupled
with the painters’ Last Judgment, the portraits of classical authors decorating
the side walls of the chapel provided a reminder of the region’s complex
interweaving of pagan and Christian identities.
We spent the remainder of our day
wandering around Orvieto: we met a delightful young shoemaker and leatherworker
named Federico , ate
a delicious lunch in a restaurant near his shop, and visited two fantastic
archaeological museums, il Museo Claudio Faina and il Museo Archaeologico
Nazionale, which are brimming with Etruscan finds.
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| Etruscan Museum, Orvieto |
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| Duomo seen from the museum |
Our two days in the land of the Etruscans reminded us what a wealth of history, art and archaeology can be found in even the smallest towns in Italy, many of which contain mysteries preserved from the region’s rich past.
If you have one more day in the region, we recommend visiting Cerveteri, another ancient Etruscan necropolis, and Viterbo, a medieval town with an interesting papal history.
Ciao, and thanks to Mary Jane for asking us to write this guest post and for providing a warm welcome in Vetralla. Thanks also to Fulvio, our special guide. What would you want to see if you had two days in Etruria?
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| Erika, Tim and Kitty |
To learn more about the area and find related blog posts about Bomarzo and Civita di Bagnoregio, use the search bar at the top of the page.
photographs by Timothy Shea
