Italy 93 - those naughty Etruscans, their tombs at Monterozzi and their naughty pottery

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Where in the world is Suzy today? Parked alongside a dusty old mainroad in the tiny town of Tarquinia next to the famous Etruscan necropolis of Monterozzi.

We have done the Romans, we have done the Eygyptians and we have done the Italians. The Italians seem to have a death wish and the further south we travel the more they seem to value life less. They drive as if they have never had a driving lesson in their lives and that everything they do in a car is right. It is you that is wrong when you bump into them, when you run them over as they weave their way walking from one side of the road to the other. They carry rosaries in their cars, their roundabouts have statues of Mary the Mother of God or of Jesus Christ but they live like madmen on the edge. The drive as they speak and it is us who take our lives in our own hands trying to avoid them as they play Russian roulette at every roundabout, every side road and to top it all they park anywhich way they like with back ends jutting into the road. Their cars are adorned with bumps and bangs and scrapes and are held together with tape. It is each for their own here.

We left Lake Bolsena to head for a bit of a different culture – pre Roman , think those warriors who loved to fight, who strode about naked, who painted their dishes red and black and depicted rude scenes on them. We were heading for one of the famous necropoli which are dotted around this area.

We have been to an Etruscan tomb before but these are purported to be better with painted ceilings and walls .

So what can we say about the Etruscans . Their civilisation lived and died in this area of Tuscany, western Umbria and Northern Lazio. The civilisation endured from around 700 BC right up to the assimilation with the Roman Republic in the late 4th century BC. We dont know much about them, nothing of their language, nor do we have anything written by them. They feared that their dead would return to haunt them so they placated them with elaborate tombs filled with all the necessary things to ease their movement to the afterlife.

Parking was relatively easy alongside the necropolis. We managed to squeeze Suzy right up to the edge of the road just enough room between us and the fence but not enough to get out of her. Taking our lives into our hands we bounded across the busy road. Italian drivers take no notice of zebra crossings. You wait for them to stop to let you cross. They carry on going. You put your foot on the crossing . They still carry on going. You start to walk across and if you are lucky they stop. If not they tear past the back of you as you walk or tear in front of you. You cannot afford to be nervous in Italy – just go for it and hope for the best.

We paid our 8 euros each entry fee which included the graves and the local museum. The graves of which there are about 6,000 date up to the the 7th century before Christ. About 200 of the gravestones are decorated with frescos. Monterozzi was designated as a World Heritage site in 2004. All are underground and covered with a hump of soil and grass. The surface coverings have over time been lost . You don’t need geophysics to work out where one might be. Time Team would have found it easy to see the above ground mound.

The tombs were excavated in the 1960's . Above each is built an entrance which looks like an entrance to a second world war bunker. They are not pretty but they are functional and work. Steps lead down into the darkness until you reach a glass door with a light switch to its side. In the darkness you can see nothing. Once the light is switched on you are invited in to a tomb with a highly decorated ceiling of red and greeny/blue. The walls decorated with dancing maidens, feasts, animals some scenes erotic. As houses for the remains of the dead go these are rather interesting ones. They reminded me of the pyramids as you climb into their depths and are modelled on houses of the day. . The bodies are long gone as are the sarcofogi that once held them but it clear to see the stone slabs cut out of the rock to hold them. Some have bedheads , others pillows in stone and some bed ends.

The tombs went on and on, some open , some closed. Some easier to see than others as we were hampered as always by a tours and school trips. But you can see them all if you have patience. We did see each one and each had something special to offer, a different scene depicted in each tomb. So next should we go in the museum and see the artifacts taken from the tombs.

We were told that the museum was in town 1km away. We didn’t want to move Suzy as she was in a good spot and it is not always easy to park a monstrous motorhome in a town centre . So we had a choice . It was hot. Did we fancy the walk into town in the blazing sunshine? Was it going to be worth the walk? Or did we give it a miss?

I am so glad we ignored the heat, ignored the pleading from our swollen feet and ankles to stop and carried on walking to town. There are no pavements as such which means walking in the road for quite some way and where there was a pavement it was cracked and broken in parts. But we did eventually get to town. Dinnertime. After our gourmet lunch yesterday what delights could the small town of Tarquinia offer.

The town is small and easily manageable. The civic buildings not spectular. Enough shops to keep most people happy.

We found the piazza a bit ordinary and work a day and we found a small bar . Nothing special in fact a bit dingy. We ordered miale with some chips. And a chicken salad . All came with the exception of the salad on plastic plates. Our water in plastic cups . Ah well it was cheap and cheerful a bit of a greasy spoon but the food was actually very good. Tarquinia was coming up trumps. Not quite gourmet eating as we had had yesterday but it was actually quite good in a plain sort of way.

The museum was right at the end of town. It always is isn’t it when your feet are aching and you just want to get there. It was housed on three floors in an old civic building. On the ground floor sarcofogi from the tombs, huge stone things with effergies very Greek in style on the tops. All of them fascinating in their own way, highly stylised by the owner with motifs that must have meant something to him or her. The iconography long forgotten. Room after room of stone tombs, some with one figure on top, others with family scenes of a husband cuddling up to his wife. They were tender and showed a family life that must have been important to those Etruscans.

The remaining floors were given over to pottery by the ton. We have seen the Etruscan collections in the British Museum but this collection in this small provincial town no-one much visits is something else. Shelf after shelf full of pottery. Display case after display case. Urns, hundreds of them, plates by the score , cups and drinking vessels oil lamps, hundreds of them from differing periods of Etruscan history. Swords and helmuts and coins . Coins as shiny as they day they were minted. Jewellery that was both beautiful, practical and amazing to see Glass beads and semi precious stones all set in silver and gold.

And of course could we miss them . Could we miss what ? The erotic stuff , the stuff of schoolboy sniggers. The cabinet behind which you hear stifled laughter. Yes we found it - the erotic stuff. . Same pottery you could have missed it easily in the mile after mile of cabinet space . The same coloured decoration of red and brown but discretely laid out in the middle of the mundanely decorated pieces . There wasnt a lot of it but what there was was explicit in every detail. . Men and women Naked in the sexual act. The pottery looked like a manual to sexual positions. The men taking the women from every conceivable angle. The women taking control and taking the men from every conceivable angle . The sexual acts explicit in detail. There were also the male /young man coupling which was part of life and beautifully depicted it was too. The bond between man and woman and man with man was clear to see in the pottery displayed.

I was smiling as I tried to imagine which of your pottery you brought out for Sunday dinner with the mother in law. Your ordinary stuff which depicted fighting scenes , bulls or other animals or did you bring out the erotica for Sunday best. It certainly would have been a talking point around the dinner table as the wine flowed.

Those naughty Etruscans.

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