Veii

Listen first. A breeze moves through tall grass, and somewhere below you water runs over rock. The ground under your shoes is soft and uneven. Here and there it breaks open into pale, crumbly stone the colour of old bread. This is tuff, a volcanic rock that once poured across this whole region. It is quiet here, only a short drive north of Rome. Yet you are standing on the site of one of the largest cities in the ancient Etruscan world.

Veii sat on a broad plateau, and the landscape still shows you why. Two streams cut deep ravines on either side. They meet below the plateau's southern tip. The result was a natural fortress, protected by steep cliffs on almost every side. The Etruscans were the people who lived in central Italy before Rome rose to power. They looked at ground like this and saw safety, water, and farmland. They chose well.

Think about the scale for a moment. At its height, Veii was larger than early Rome. It was not a small village on the edge of history. It was a wealthy city with temples, workshops, and roads. It traded across the Mediterranean, and it controlled salt routes near the mouth of the Tiber. For centuries, Rome was the smaller neighbour. That fact surprises many visitors, because we usually tell this story from Rome's side.

People lived on this plateau long before the city took its final shape. Archaeologists have found traces of Iron Age settlements here. These belong to what scholars call the Villanovan culture, the early phase of Etruscan civilisation. Families lived in huts with walls of wood and clay. Over generations, those scattered villages joined together. By the seventh century before Christ, Veii was a true city, and its elite were buried in painted tombs cut into the surrounding hills.

Two of those tombs are worth knowing by name. The Tomb of the Ducks carries a simple painted frieze of waterbirds walking in a line. It is one of the oldest painted tombs in Etruria. The Campana Tomb was found in the nineteenth century. Its walls show animals, riders, and strange, fantastic creatures. Access to the tombs is limited and often needs special arrangement. But even from the paths, you can see dark openings in the tuff, where the dead of Veii were once laid to rest.

Now to the most famous object from this place... and it is not here. In the early twentieth century, excavators at the Portonaccio sanctuary found a life-size terracotta statue of Apollo. He strides forward with a faint, mysterious smile. Today he stands in the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia in Rome. Many scholars link the statue to the workshop of Vulca. He is one of the very few Etruscan artists whose name survives in ancient writing.

Here is the second surprise. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder tells us that Rome hired Vulca of Veii. Rome wanted a terracotta cult statue of Jupiter for its great temple on the Capitoline Hill. So the most sacred image in early Rome may have come from the hands of an artist from its rival. The two cities fought for generations. Yet they shared craftsmen, gods, and ideas across these few kilometres of countryside.

The Portonaccio sanctuary itself lies on a terrace below the plateau, near the stream. Its foundations are still visible. The temple was built mainly of wood and mud brick on a stone base. Its roof carried a row of painted terracotta statues along the ridge. Imagine them in bright reds, blacks, and creams, standing against the sky. The Apollo was one of those figures. When you stand here, you are looking at the spot where he once looked down on worshippers.

The rivalry with Rome ended in war. According to the Roman historian Livy, Rome besieged Veii for ten years. The traditional date for its fall is 396 BC, under the Roman general Marcus Furius Camillus. Notice the number ten. It matches the length of the Trojan War in Greek myth. Historians suspect the Roman story borrowed that epic shape. The war was certainly long and hard, but the exact details come to us through legend.

The most famous tale is the tunnel. Legend has it that Roman soldiers dug a passage through the soft tuff. It came up directly inside the temple of Juno, the city's protecting goddess. Even Livy treats this story with some caution. But the rock here really is full of ancient channels. The Etruscans were skilled engineers. They cut tunnels called cuniculi to drain fields and move water. So the legend may grow from something real in the landscape.

After the conquest, the Romans did something revealing. They performed a ritual to invite Juno to leave Veii and move to Rome. Her statue was carried to a new temple on the Aventine Hill. The Romans believed a city's gods had to be won over, not only its walls. Later, under the emperor Augustus, a small Roman town grew up here. But it never matched the old Etruscan city. Slowly, fields and pasture covered the streets.

Today the area forms part of the Veio Regional Park. Walking paths follow the ravines, past old bridges, mills, and waterfalls. Near the village of Isola Farnese, a stream falls over the tuff in a white curtain of water. Another spot, called Ponte Sodo, is a tunnel cut straight through the rock, with the stream running inside it. Sheep sometimes graze on the plateau. The ruins are low and scattered. You need some imagination here, and that is part of the pleasure.

Before you leave, stop and look across the plateau. Picture houses, smoke from cooking fires, and the painted roofs of temples. Then look south, toward Rome, out of sight beyond the low hills. Two cities stood this close, and for a long time either one could have won. Listen again to the water in the ravine. It ran here before Veii, and it runs here still, long after the city fell silent.