A ridge of mounds facing the city
The Monterozzi is a long hill, about 6 km, running parallel to the Tyrrhenian coast between the sea and the hill of the Civita, where the Etruscan city stood. The city, Tarchuna to the Etruscans and Tarquinii to the Romans, lay about 3 km north-east of the modern town; excavations in the 1930s found an imposing circuit of walls and the foundations of a great temple, the Ara della Regina. The dead lived opposite the living, on their own ridge.
More than 6,000 tombs are known, mostly chamber tombs cut into the rock and once covered by earth mounds. You would hardly guess it today: centuries of farming have flattened the mounds, although about a century ago more than 600 could still be counted. The oldest remains on the site of the city, well tombs of the Villanovan period, go back to the ninth century BCE.
Two hundred painted rooms
What makes Tarquinia famous is paint. About 200 tombs have painted walls, the most important group in Etruria, spanning the seventh to the second century BCE. In the sixth century come the Tomb of the Hunting and Fishing (about 520 BCE) and the dancing and banqueting scenes of the Tombs of the Lionesses, of the Augurs and of the Bacchantes; in the fifth, the Tomb of the Triclinium and the Tomb of the Leopards; in the fourth, the Tomb of the Shields; in the second, the rare late paintings of the Tomb of the Cardinal. For what the paintings themselves show and how they were made, there is a separate guide.
The tombs have been known for a long time. Michelangelo visited Tarquinia in the Renaissance, and a sketch connected to that visit is kept in the Buonarroti archive in Florence.
A city that fought Rome
Tarquinia was one of the leading cities of the Etruscan league against Rome. It went to war in 394, 388 and 358-351 BCE and was overcome in 311; a Roman colony was founded there in 181, and its people received Roman citizenship in 90 BCE, at the end of the long decline of the Etruscan cities. The town shrank under the late empire, and after the Lombard and Saracen invasions the old site was abandoned. Its people moved to a lower hill, to the town known in the Middle Ages as Corneto, which took the name Tarquinia only in 1922.
Fragile, and partly private
Opening the tombs to visitors has been hard on them. Moisture and fungus have attacked many paintings, and the breath and warmth of visitors change the temperature and humidity of the chambers. In the mid-twentieth century some paintings were detached and moved to the museum, a practice that has since stopped. The land itself is a patchwork: only some areas, among them the Calvario, the Scataglini necropolis and the Doganaccia tombs, belong to the state, and the rest is still privately owned, so part of the necropolis lies under fields. The Scataglini area, fully excavated, shows what the city of the dead once looked like.
Visiting Tarquinia
The necropolis is managed by the Parco archeologico di Cerveteri e Tarquinia. In October 2026 it was open from Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00 to 19:30, without booking; among the painted tombs open to visitors were those of the Lionesses, the Leopards and the Hunting and Fishing. The joint ticket for museum and necropolis cost €13 and was valid for a month. In town, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale occupies Palazzo Vitelleschi, a Renaissance palace built in 1436-39, and holds the winged horses of the Ara della Regina; its second floor, where the detached tomb paintings are shown, was closed for works at the same date, so check before you go.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia” (1158).
- Ministero della Cultura, “Necropoli dei Monterozzi di Tarquinia” and “Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Tarquinia”.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Tarquinia”.
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