Cerveteri and Tarquinia - Italy

The Etruscan necropolis of Cerveteri and Tarquinia in the north Lazio have been included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. 

 Back in 2011 Gisela sent me a card of Cerveteri and last week, I found a Tarquinia card in that book fair in Brescia. 

These two large Etruscan cemeteries reflect different types of burial practices from the 9th to the 1st century BC, and bear witness to the achievements of Etruscan culture. Which over nine centuries developed the earliest urban civilization in the northern Mediterranean.

The necropolis near Cerveteri, known as the Banditaccia, contains thousands of tombs organized in a city-like plan, with streets, small squares, and neighbourhoods. The 197.57 ha site dates from the 9th century BCE and contains very different types of tombs: trenches cut in rock; tumuli which often contain more than one tomb; and some, also carved in rock, in the shape of huts or houses with a wealth of structural details. The Banditaccia necropolis, among the largest in antiquity, reproduces the ‘city of the living’. Because there is little surviving written information on the Etruscans, this site provides exceptional testimony of Etruscan domestic architecture from archaic times to the Hellenic period.

 

The whole necropolis of Tarquinia, also known as Monterozzi, contains 6,000 graves cut into the rock. Covering 129.36 ha, it is one of the most extensive complexes known. Tarquinia is famous for its 200 painted tombs, the earliest of which date from the 7th century BCE. These paintings provide the only major testimony of classic artwork of pre-Roman times existing in the Mediterranean basin. - in: https://whc.unesco.org

Discovered in 1892, the Tomba dei Tori dates back to 530 BC, it stands on the east side of the Necropolis of Monterozzi.
The tomb is famous for its mid-late archaic frescoes, still deeply characterized by frontal drawings.