Caere

Listen to your footsteps for a moment. The ground here is soft volcanic stone called tufa, the colour of old honey, and in places you can see cart ruts worn deep into it. Moss grows in the cracks. Cypress and umbrella pines throw long shadows across low, rounded mounds covered in grass. It feels like a quiet park. In fact, you are walking through a city built for the dead.

This is Caere, one of the great cities of the Etruscans. The Etruscans were the people who ruled much of central Italy before Rome became a power. They had their own language, their own gods, and a rich culture of trade and craft. Caere was among their most important centres. The Greeks knew it by another name, Agylla, and Greek merchants and artists traded here for generations.

The living city stood on a plateau where the modern town of Cerveteri now sits. Very little of its houses and temples survives above ground. What survives, in astonishing detail, are the cemeteries around it. The largest is the one you are likely standing in now, the Banditaccia necropolis. A necropolis simply means a city of the dead. Together with the painted tombs of nearby Tarquinia, it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2004.

Look at the shape of the large mounds. Archaeologists call them tumuli. Each one is a circular drum of stone, partly carved straight out of the bedrock and partly built up with blocks, then capped with earth. Some are small. Others are wide enough to hold several separate tombs inside. Walking between them, you follow streets and lanes, almost as if you were moving through a real neighbourhood.

And that is the point. Many of these tombs were designed to look like Etruscan homes. Duck inside one, and you often find a doorway, a short corridor, and then rooms. Here is the first surprise for many visitors. The furniture is carved from the living rock. There are stone beds with pillows, stone chairs with backs, columns with carved capitals, and ceilings cut to imitate wooden beams. The dead were laid to rest in a house that would never decay.

These stone interiors are precious for another reason. Etruscan houses were built mostly of wood, mud brick, and clay, and almost none survive. So when scholars want to know how an Etruscan home looked inside, they often come to tombs like these. The cemetery has become a kind of architectural record of a lost domestic world.

Keep an eye out for small stone markers near some tomb entrances. These are called cippi. A common interpretation says the shapes signal who was buried within. A rounded, column-like marker is thought to stand for a man. A marker shaped like a tiny house or roof is thought to stand for a woman. It is a small, human detail, and once you notice it, you begin to see these markers all around you.

The necropolis was used over a very long span, from the early Iron Age into the Roman period. You can see that change in the architecture. The older tombs tend to sit inside the great round mounds. Later ones are often cube-shaped tombs lined up along regular streets, like terraced houses. Walk slowly, and you are walking through centuries of changing fashion in how a family honoured its dead.

One tomb deserves special attention. It is known as the Tomb of the Reliefs. Inside, the walls and pillars are covered with painted stucco objects, shown hanging as if on hooks. There are kitchen tools, weapons, cushions, and even small animals. It is like a snapshot of everything a wealthy household owned. Access to this tomb is usually controlled, and you may only see it through a glass screen, but it is worth seeking out.

Many of the treasures found here no longer stay at Caere. The most famous is the Sarcophagus of the Spouses, a terracotta coffin lid showing a married couple reclining together at a banquet. They smile, and the husband rests his arm around his wife. That piece is now in the Villa Giulia museum in Rome. Another rich burial, the Regolini-Galassi tomb, produced gold jewellery that is now held in the Vatican Museums.

Caere also looked toward the sea. The city controlled harbours on the nearby coast, including Pyrgi. Here is the second surprise. At Pyrgi, archaeologists found thin gold tablets inscribed with the same dedication in two languages, Etruscan and Phoenician. The Phoenicians were seafaring traders from the eastern Mediterranean. Because the Etruscan language is still only partly understood, this pair of texts became an important key for scholars.

Caere had a long and complicated relationship with Rome. According to the Roman historian Livy, when Gauls attacked Rome in the early fourth century before Christ, the people of Caere sheltered Rome's sacred objects and priestesses. Over time, though, Rome absorbed the city, and its power faded. In the Middle Ages, many inhabitants moved to a new settlement nearby. The old site became known as Caere Vetus, Old Caere, and that phrase is where the name Cerveteri comes from.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment between the mounds. Notice the light on the tufa, the birdsong in the pines, the cool air that drifts out of the open doorways. Thousands of people were carried down these lanes by families who loved them. As you walk back toward the town, look at the hills around you, and remember that much of ancient Caere still sleeps beneath the fields.