The Etruscans

The Etruscans have interested me for years but I knew more or less nothing about them apart from a brief mention when I studied "Horatio and the Keeping of the Bridge" by Lord Macaulay at school.
All that was to change as a friend and I booked on a guided tour of Etruscan sites between Pisa and Rome.
We flew to Pisa and then were taken to our hotel in the historic Tuscan hill town of Colle Val d'Elsa.

The following day we were taken to wonderful Medieval Volterra. We began in the museum to look at the Etruscan finds.

We visited the excavations on the acropolis and then walked to the Roman theatre.

As we were walking through the streets we could here drums and trumpets and we came across Medieval flag waving and throwing.

It was a good day in Volterra and we were lucky to see and hear the flag waving and throwing.
The next day we headed for Florence starting at the Archaeological museum and the collection formed by the Grand Dukes.

 

 Wherever you walk in Florence there is something of interest around the corner and we walked down to the Arno to the Ponte Vecchio.

The next day we headed South visiting Chiusi en route. Once the city of Lars Porsenna, head of the Etruscan League. 
We started the day with a visit to two underground tombs.

In the afternoon we visited the museum.

We then continued driving South until we arrived at our new hotel .

Today we visited the beautiful Renaissance Villa Guilia which houses one of the world's best collection of Etruscan art and artefacts.

The villa Guilia was beautifully decorated  with painted walls and ceilings.

The Etruscan finds were breathtaking.

Tarquinia was our destination the next day, to explore the museum in the morning and the necropolis in the afternoon.

After lunch we were able to explore the beautifully painted tombs in the Monterozzi necropolis.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped off to view a Roman theatre and  Etruscan tombs carved into the rock.

In the pouring rain we headed to Orvieto set high on a tufa outcrop. We visited the Belvedere temple complex and explored the Medieval streets.

We visited the Archaeological museum.

After a lunch of pizza we headed to some of the caves and tunnels carved into the soft rock under Orvieto.

After a good but wet day we headed back to our hotel.

The last day of our tour took us to the remarkable cemetery of Banditaccia.

 The guardian took me into one of the tombs and played Etruscan images with soundtrack onto the walls.

We went for lunch and then onto the airport and home after a very interesting,  exciting and exhausting trip knowing a little more about the Etruscans.