Discover Necropolis of Banditaccia

The Banditaccia is the largest ancient necropolis in the Mediterranean, and the burial ground of the Etruscan city the Romans called Caere. It covers 400 hectares, of which about 10 can be visited, and holds roughly a thousand tombs, many of them under the round earth mounds that give the place its shape on the skyline. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the necropolis at Tarquinia.

The name has nothing to do with the Etruscans: it comes from the bando, the leasing of these plots of land by local landowners to the people of Cerveteri.

The Banditaccia at Cerveteri is the main surviving evidence for how Etruscan buildings were put together, and it survives for a backwards reason: they built their houses in wood and their tombs in rock. Most of the chambers here are cut out of the tufa rather than constructed, and most of them echo Greek architecture in their members and proportions -- so the necropolis is simultaneously a record of Etruscan domestic planning and of what Etruria was importing from the Greek world.

Two types dominate and they are a sequence rather than a choice. The tumulus is the older: a circular mound raised over chambers hollowed into the rock, scaled up through the orientalising period into something monumental. The dado or dice tomb is the later: a plain square block, and crucially they are set out in long rows along roads. That change is the site's most interesting architectural fact, because it is the moment a cemetery becomes an urban plan -- individual monuments give way to a street frontage.

The earliest layer argues against reading too much grandeur into it. Ninth-century Villanovan burials here are pits for ashes and simple potholes, and everything else is what three centuries of accumulating wealth did to that starting point.

It was cut, not built. Most of the tombs at Cerveteri are excavated from the tufa the plateau is made of, which is soft enough to carve and firm enough to hold a roof. That single property is why Etruscan interior architecture survives at all: the houses the chambers imitate were built in perishable material and are gone.

It grew for six centuries. The sequence runs from ninth-century BC Villanovan pits holding cremation urns, through the great tumuli of the orientalising period and the refined chambers of the archaic, to the square dice tombs ranged along streets in the later Etruscan period, ending in the third century BC. Each phase sits beside the last rather than replacing it, which is why the ground reads as a town that was extended rather than rebuilt.

The city that paid for it was rich from iron. Caere stood about 7 km from the sea, a position that made it a wealthy trading town on the back of the iron-ore mines in the Tolfa Hills. It had three sea ports, among them Pyrgi -- connected to the city by a road 13 km long and 10 m wide -- and Punicum. At its height around 600 BC its population may have been 25,000 to 40,000.

Then it was emptied. The contents of the tombs were excavated over the last few centuries, often chaotically and illegally, and yielded rich and exquisite objects, ceramics and jewellery that now grace museums around the world. The Sarcophagus of the Spouses is the most famous thing to have come out of Caere. What is left on site is the architecture, which is the part that could not be carried away.

How big is it?

400 hectares, of which 10 can be visited, holding about a thousand tombs -- the largest ancient necropolis in the Mediterranean area.

Are the tombs painted?

A few are, including the Tomb of the Painted Lions of 620 BC, but painting is not what Cerveteri is for. The frescoed necropolis of the UNESCO pair is Monterozzi at Tarquinia, where about 200 chambers are decorated. The Banditaccia's subject is carved architecture.

Why is it called the Banditaccia?

Nothing to do with burial. The name comes from the bando, the leasing of these areas of land to the people of Cerveteri by the local landowners.

How old are the tombs?

They run from the ninth century BC, in the Villanovan culture, to the later Etruscan period in the third century BC. The earliest are pits holding the ashes of the dead.

Where did the contents go?

Out, over several centuries, often chaotically and illegally. They yielded ceramics and jewellery that are now in museums around the world; the Sarcophagus of the Spouses is the most famous object to have come from Caere.

Is it a UNESCO site?

Yes, inscribed together with the necropolis at Tarquinia.