Etruscan life: Tuscania

People often correct me when I tell them I’m going to Tuscania. Italians will flash a pitiful smile at me, the poor foreigner mangling the name of Italy’s most famous region, Tuscany (Toscane in Italian.) But it’s not my poor Italian that’s at fault - there really is a place called Tuscania and confusingly, it is located in Lazio, about 20 km from the Tuscan border.  

Tuscany, Tuscania- you can blame the Etruscans for this confusion. When the Romans were still stuck on their seven hills on the Tiber, the Etruscans held sway over large parts of central Italy. The Latin name for this region, Tusci, ultimately gave us both Tuscany and Tuscania, places where the Etruscans lived. 

The Etruscans are alive and well in Tuscania- not literally of course, as their civilisation was gradually absorbed by the Romans in the 3rd century BC. But wandering around Tuscania you’ll be seeing plenty of Etruscan faces, beautifully carved out of the local stone. 

The town and its surroundings are littered with Etruscan tombs and sarcophagi. The best sarcophagi have been carted off to various museums around Europe - the Louvre in Paris for example, has an excellent collection. But there are simply too many relics to treasure. So much so, that these 2500-year-old works of art have been spread around Tuscania’s Piazza del Commune (townhall square), as well as nearby St Peter’s church, where they sit, simply for decoration. Anywhere but Italy, these pieces would be sitting in a museum. Here, they’re just sitting outside, come rain or shine, because the museums are already full. An embarrassment of riches indeed.

Tuscania’s roots lie on the hill now known as Colle de San Pietro, or St Peter’s hill. It’s named for the magnificent Romanesque church built in the 11th and 12th century, but St Peter’s hill had been inhabited for over 1500 years by the time the church was constructed.

Be sure to step inside the church. This magnificent building somehow survived the 1972 earthquake that shook the town, and has a crypt whose pillars have been cobbled together from various ancient sites A number of Etruscans will greet you in the nave of the church. Outside, traces of Etruscan and Roman walls and foundations are easily visible around the hill.

Most Etruscan portraits show them reclining, and it has been said that a people too lazy to stand up and fight deserved to be conquered by the Romans. They frequently hold something that looks suspiciously like a frisbee- which is as good an explanation as anything else, as nobody knows exactly what these disks were for. Can you see why the adjective ‘mysterious’ is often used to describe these people?

From St Peter’s hill you can walk to some of the tombs that are litter the countryside here. Often these look like caves, but they are man-made. Most feature stone beds, and even pillows- a comfortable place for the dead to be laid to rest.

One of the most interesting sites is Le Scalette, which features a number of cave tombs as well as something that looks like an antique pigeonhole. It appears to have been an Etrusco-Roman columbarium, a place where ashes or remains of the dead were placed- certainly a lot more economical than carving a massive cave tomb.

So next time you’re heading for Tuscany, consider stopping in its near-namesake, Tuscania, to pay homage to the people who coined both names, a long, long time ago.  

Getting there:

Tuscania is just over 100km north of Rome and can easily be reached by car, following either the coastal highway A12 (faster) or the ancient SS2 Via Cassia (more scenic.) 

There are frequent COTRAL buses both from Tarquinia and Viterbo (both of which have direct train connections to Rome).

Restaurants:

You’ll be spoiled for choice when it comes to food in Tuscania. 

- Torre di Lavello offers creative Italian cuisine on a lovely terrace overlooking one of the towns towers. 

- Palazzo Ranucci sports the best view in town, if not in all of Lazio, and offers traditional Roman specialties. 

- Caffè del Duomo has great coffee and snacks right in the square in front of, you guessed it, the Duomo.  

For more on Tuscania, see Minor Sights: The Town of Tuscania (Not Tuscany!)

About the author: Michiel is the founder & editor of Minor Sights, a website dedicated to fascinating places that are barely mentioned in guidebooks. He divides his time between Paris and Northern Lazio.