Tarquinia

Distance: 49 Km.

One of the most flourishing and important Etruscan cities, its splendor can still be seen by the size and beauty of its necropolis: 6,000 Etruscan tombs, 60 of which housing highly colorful frescoes depicting scenes of hunting, fishing, banquets and jugglers. A trip back in time, to 25 centuries ago.

The Etruscans are defined, also now, one of the "mystery peoples" of the antiquity and this is due to the fact that their literature was deliberately destroyed in the first centuries A.D. Of first-hand knowledge we have nothing except what the tombs offer. Quoting Lawrence, "so to the tombs we must go" . In fact, unfortunately, almost all that is certainly known or reasonably inferred about the Etruscans comes to us by tomb-frescos and tomb-furniture. The early tomb-paintings shows a people who enjoyed life and for this they were called 'immoral' by Romans and overall by the first christians. But now it is clear that instead our contemporary civilization with christian origin is immoral because is responsible of the destruction of our cultural origin!! The early tombs seem so easy and friendly that one does not fell oppressed, descending into them. There is a simplicity, combined with a naturalness and spontaneity , in all the figures, movements of the tomb frescos, that at once reassures the spirit. The Tomb of Leopards show again a feast in which one of the banqueters, probably  the men who has died, is holding up, between thumb and forefinger, an egg, showing it to the yellow-haired woman who reclines next to him. But this egg is the symbol of rebirth and then now we can understand this glad vision of life and death.