Originally posted on my Tumblr travel blog, A Roman Spring with IES, in 2008.
This past Friday I attended an IES day trip to a Etruscan Necropolis. Well, actually it was two separate sites, and both were quite different from each other. However, both were built for the same purpose, to house the dead.
We arrived by bus to the first site where all the tombs were underground. You only had to climb down a flight of stairs to see the tomb, which were empty. Everything from the tombs were either plundered or removed to be put into museums. There were, however, painting on the walls. In fact, this is the main reason my class went, because we are studying wall paintings in my art history class.
For the most part I was very disappointed by this first site. The tombs were closed off for preservation purposes and could only be viewed through a glass door. The only thing that was terribly interesting was an explicit erotic painting on one of the walls featuring two males and one female (I won’t explain anymore, use your imagination!). We ate lunch on the site and headed out to the next site.
We arrived to the next necropolis just as it started to rain. However, we were not disappointed by this. In fact, the I think the rain made site that much better. It set a certain mood for the surroundings.
This site was much more interesting than the last. These tombs were carved out of stone and were shaped as large, round mounds. Most of the tombs you had to climb up into and there you would find several carved beds for the corpse to lay on. Again, nothing was in the tombs, but it was cool because you could actually walk around in the tombs. Some people even lay down on the beds and took pictures acting like they were dead (yuck). The last part of the tour we were allowed to wonder around by ourselves. There were so many cool niches and paths that we could have wondered around for hours. I also got some very nice pictures, thanks to my friend Sarah pointing out my cameras macro feature. So I will be sure to put those pictures up on the blog.
This weekend I am heading to Napoli (Naples) with Sarah and Rigo. We are also planning to travel down to Pompeii. If it doesn’t rain on us, it should be a good trip. Look for the blog entry upon my return.
Until next time, Ciao!
Photos
The painted inside of a tomb. The tombs were shaped like a house to aid in the comfort of the diseased. The journey to the underworld was supposed to be very difficult.
Another tomb.
A horse with a ridiculous haircut.
I don’t really know what these things were used for but they looked like stone mushrooms.
Necropolis #2, more commonly known as Necropoli della Banditaccia
Me in one of the Necropolis tombs
Sarah’s dead flower.