This past week we focused on the origins of Rome: the Etruscans who inhabited the land originally, and the earliest Romans. The first two pictures are from a necropolis (literally, city for the dead) in Tarquinia, which is about 1 hour NW of Rome. The first one I took standing on the hill of the necropolis. It wasn't a great day for photos, but the dark patch on the mountain on the left is the site that was inhabited by the Etruscans who used the necropolis.
This is one of the many tombs in the Necropolis...it dates to the 6th century BC...and the paintings are still incredibly vivid. We were able to access the tombs by some modern stairs (they are maybe 2 storeys underground) and look at them through glass. This one is called the tomb of the leopards (you can see the leopards on the frieze at the top), and it depicts a banquet...this tomb in particular shows Greek influence on Etrsucan art, etc.
After Tarquinia, we got back on the bus and headed to Cerveteri (Caere in ancient times), which was an Etruscan city in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. We visited the Banditaccia Necropolis, which had a few different types of tombs. The one below is a mound tomb, which was made by cutting into natural rock. We saw some other really amazing tombs, one of which was probably about 3 storeys underground. All of these tombs were built so that they could be repeatedly accessed...they all had stairs of some kind. The necropolis was HUGE. I don't know how people back then avoided getting extremely lost.
Anyway, moving on from academia. Sorry to bore anyone. Today we went to an Italian football game! Roma vs Genoa. Roma, of course was victorious, 3-0. (Ironically, they're ranked below Genoa). It was pretty awesome. I can only imagine how much pride I would have living in a city with such a long history. I felt a lot of pride as a visitor. (We all did...here's us with our Roma scarves). The picture below this one is during a song everyone sang for the Rome team...we all plan on learning the lyrics for the next game we go to. I think the best part was the bus ride back to the Centro. We crammed on with a bunch of Rome fans and the entire ride they were yelling and singing different team chants. I've never seen anything like it in the US...but again, there's a lot of city pride.
Okay, that's all for now. I have to get some sleep for this coming week. But what an awesome game.
In the field nearby were the remains of a this little medieval church, which is completely unrelated, but I thought it was cool.
Our next stop was Nemi. We went to the ship musesum, where we saw a few small remains and some reconstructions of ships thought to be the luxury ships of Caligula. Unfortunately the ships themselves, which were excavated from the nearby lake under Mussolini, were destroyed during in 1944 in WWII. We then climbed up a hill to the temple of Diana, shown below. (This is only one wall of it). It dates back to maybe the 8th c BC, but it became a Latin sanctuary in about 500 BC. The presiding priest was called the Rex Nemorensis. Apparently, if you wanted to take over as the Rex, you had to find the sacred branch, and use it to kill the existing Rex Nemorensis. Ironically, the temple is in a grove, so I wasn't sure which tree was the sacred one.
Next was Tusculum. We climbed up a steep hill to a site where a lot of wealthy Romans had villas, including Cicero. Despite the wind and fog, the view was amazing. The little house-looking structure is a Christian shrine. I'm not sure what the other lump of rocks is.
The view.
More view!
