Necropolis of Banditaccia site features

The Banditaccia covers 400 hectares, of which 10 can be visited, and contains about a thousand tombs. That makes it the largest ancient necropolis in the Mediterranean, and it means the visitable part is a twenty-fifth of what is there. The name has no funerary meaning at all: it comes from the bando, the leasing of these areas of land to the people of Cerveteri by the local landowners.

The streets

The organising fact is that it is laid out like a town. Two roads run through the visitable area, the Via dei Monti Ceriti and the Via dei Monti della Tolfa, both sixth-century BC, and the later tombs stand along them in long rows -- the so-called dice, simple square blocks set out like houses on a street. Most of the tombs are cut out of the tufa, and most echo Greek architecture in their detail.

The mounds

The other main type is the tumulus: circular mounds raised over chambers cut into the rock, often very large, and these are what give the site its profile from a distance. The sequence of forms is a chronology in itself. The earliest tombs, from the ninth century BC and the Villanovan culture, are pits holding the ashes of the dead, with simple potholes among them; the latest run to the third century BC.

The named tombs

Among the most important are the Regolini-Galassi tomb, with rich gold finds from the middle of the seventh century BC; the Tomb of the Capitals and the Tomb of the Shields and Chairs, both mid-sixth century; the Tomb of the Painted Lions of 620 BC; and from the late period the Tomb of the Reliefs, the Tomb of the Sea Waves and the Tomb of the Alcove, spanning the fourth to the second centuries BC. The Tomba della Capanna, the Tomba dei Vasi Greci, the Tomba dei Doli and the Tomba Calabresi are also among the named chambers.

The Tomb of the Reliefs

4th-2nd century B.C. The best-known chamber in the necropolis, and the one that makes the case for the whole site: a tomb carved and modelled to look like a furnished room.

The Regolini-Galassi tomb

Mid-7th century B.C., and the richest in gold of anything found here -- the kind of deposit that explains why the tombs of Cerveteri were emptied so thoroughly and so early.

The Tomb of the Shields and Chairs

Middle of the 6th century B.C. One of the clearest statements of the principle behind the site: the chamber reproduces the fittings of a house, which is how an architecture built in perishable material survives in stone.

The Tomb of the Painted Lions

620 B.C., and a reminder that Cerveteri is not entirely unpainted -- though the frescoed necropolis of the pair is Tarquinia, not this one.

The Tomb of the Capitals

Middle of the 6th century B.C., named for the carved capitals of its supports.

The Via dei Monti Ceriti and the Via dei Monti della Tolfa

6th century B.C. The two streets of the visitable area, with the square dice tombs ranged along them in rows. They are the reason this reads as town planning rather than burial ground.

The tumuli

Circular mounds raised over rock-cut chambers, the dominant form of the earlier periods and the shape that gives the necropolis its skyline.