Necropolis Banditaccia

Outside the hill town of Cerveteri, the ancient Etruscan city of Caere laid out a second city for its dead, and the Banditaccia is what remains of it. Great round tumuli of tuff, capped with grass, sit along streets cut into the soft volcanic rock, with rows of smaller square tombs lined up between them like terraced houses. Walking the sunken lanes between these mounds, with the walls of rock rising on either side, is one of the most complete experiences of an ancient city of any kind that survives in Italy.

The cemetery was in use for the better part of seven centuries, from the Villanovan period of the ninth century BC to the late Etruscan era of the third century BC. The earliest burials were simple pits for cremation urns. Later came the two forms that shape the landscape today: the tumuli, circular drums built in tuff with their chambers carved out of the living rock beneath, and the so-called dice tombs, plain cube-like tombs set in long orderly rows along the funerary roads. The whole necropolis covers about 400 hectares and is thought to hold around a thousand tombs, of which roughly ten hectares are laid out for visitors. Together with the painted tombs of Tarquinia, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004.

What makes the Banditaccia extraordinary is that the Etruscans built their tombs as copies of their houses, and here the interiors can be entered. Inside the chambers the rock has been carved to imitate the timber beams of a ceiling, doorways, benches and funeral beds. The Tomb of the Shields and Chairs, from the mid-sixth century BC, takes its name from the chairs cut from the stone and the shields carved on its walls; the Tomb of the Capitals of the same period imitates a pillared room. The later Tomb of the Reliefs, made for the Matuna family, is the most famous of all, its interior covered with reliefs that turn the chamber into a portrait of a household. Many of the richest grave goods, including the gold of the Regolini-Galassi tomb, left long ago for museums, but the architecture of the tombs themselves is still in place.

Getting there

The necropolis lies about 2 km from the centre of Cerveteri, and Rome Fiumicino airport (FCO) is about 26 km away. From Rome, CoTral buses to Cerveteri leave from the Cornelia stop on metro line A and take about an hour; from the town, the site is roughly a 25-minute walk along country roads, or a short taxi ride.