Vulci

Listen first. Under the wind there is the sound of moving water. It is the river Fiora, running fast and green through a gorge of dark volcanic stone. Around you the land is open and wide: wheat fields, grazing cattle, low scrub, and a long sky over the Maremma coast. Nothing here looks like a city. Yet for centuries, this quiet plateau held one of the great cities of the ancient Mediterranean.

This is Vulci. Today it sits in the countryside between Montalto di Castro and Canino, in the far north of Lazio. But to the Etruscans it was a powerful city-state. The Etruscans were the people who ruled much of central Italy before Rome grew strong. They built cities on high ground, traded across the sea, and buried their dead in elaborate underground tombs. Vulci was counted among their leading cities, and it grew rich from farming, metalwork, and trade.

Look at the ground beneath your feet. Much of this plateau is tuff, a soft rock made from compressed volcanic ash. Tuff is easy to cut but strong enough to stand. That is why the landscape around Vulci is full of carved chambers, channels, and passages. The river cut the gorge. The Etruscans cut the tombs. Almost everything that survives here was shaped from this same warm, porous stone.

Vulci's craftsmen were famous for bronze. Their workshops produced vessels, stands, and figures that travelled far beyond Italy. The city also imported huge quantities of painted pottery from Greece. Wealthy families here loved Athenian vases, the black and red painted cups and jars showing gods, heroes, and athletes. They used them at banquets in life. Then they took them into the tomb.

Here is the first surprise. Some of the finest Greek vases in the world were not found in Greece at all. They were found here, in Etruscan graves. In the 1820s and 1830s, this land belonged to Lucien Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon, who held the title Prince of Canino. His workers opened tomb after tomb. Thousands of vases came out of the ground, and many are now in museums across Europe. Locals still tell a story that the discoveries began when an ox pulling a plough broke through the roof of a buried chamber. It is a good tale... but treat it as legend.

Those early digs were fast and careless by modern standards. The diggers wanted objects to sell, not knowledge. Much information about who was buried where was lost forever. Modern archaeology at Vulci has worked hard to recover what it can, and excavations here continue to change what we know about the city and its people.

The most celebrated tomb is the François Tomb, named after Alessandro François, who excavated it in the mid nineteenth century. Its walls were painted with vivid scenes. One shows Achilles killing Trojan prisoners, a scene from Greek myth. Another shows Etruscan heroes, including a figure named Mastarna, freeing a captive companion. Some historians link Mastarna to a king of early Rome. The original frescoes were removed and taken to Rome, so what remains on site is the carved structure, not the paintings.

The tombs sit in several cemeteries outside the old city walls. The Etruscans kept the dead apart from the living. Some burials lie under great earth mounds, called tumuli, rising from the fields like low green hills. Inside, corridors lead to chambers laid out like rooms in a house. Standing in one, you can feel how the Etruscans imagined the afterlife — a home, furnished and familiar.

Now the second surprise. Vulci did not end with the Etruscans. Rome conquered the city in the early third century before Christ, and a Roman town grew on the same plateau. Inside the archaeological park you can walk along a Roman road paved with large, dark, polygonal blocks of basalt. Look closely and you may see grooves worn by cart wheels. Nearby are the remains of houses, a temple, and a sanctuary of Mithras, a god worshipped in secret by Roman soldiers and merchants.

The remains of a large Roman house show how comfortable life could be here. There are traces of courtyards, rooms, and an underground corridor that kept the house cool in summer. Walk slowly through these ruins. The walls are low now, often only knee height, so you must imagine the rest. Use the lines of stone as a floor plan, and picture the roofs, the colours, and the voices.

Then go down to the river. The Fiora has carved a deep channel here, with a waterfall and a still, dark pool below. On a hot day the water looks cold and very clear. Above the gorge stands an old bridge, high and narrow, built of stone and reaching across the drop in a single tall arch. Its origins are ancient, and it carried traffic across the river for centuries. Beside it rises a medieval castle with a square tower, built in later centuries to guard this crossing.

That castle now holds the National Archaeological Museum of Vulci. Inside you can see objects from the tombs: pottery, bronzes, and stone sculpture. Some of the most memorable pieces are the stone guardian figures — lions, sphinxes, and other creatures — carved to protect the dead. It is worth seeing them after the tombs. Then the empty chambers in the fields make more sense. You know what once filled them.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment. Look at the bridge, the castle, and the fields running toward the sea. The river is still running below you, as it did when Etruscan families crossed this gorge. The city is mostly under the grass now. But the stone remembers its shape. As you walk away, notice the small things: a cut edge in the tuff, a dark basalt block, the sound of water following you up the path.