Tarquinia historical timeline

The settlement formed from the end of the tenth century BC, and through the Iron Age it became one of the most extensive proto-urban centres in Etruria, with a main settlement on the Civita and a satellite village on the Monterozzi, later covered by the necropolis.

Between the ninth and eighth centuries the city emerged as a commercial and artisanal power, open to trade with the Greek and Near Eastern worlds — the rich grave goods of the Villanovan cemeteries record it — and that rise was helped by its control of the mineral resources of the Tolfa hills to the south.

It was one of the principal cities of the Etruscan dodecapolis, and ancient tradition gave it a founding role for the entire civilisation: Tarchon, presented by the sources as the brother or delegate of Tyrrhenus, was credited with founding both the city and the league itself, while the Tarquinian countryside was where Tages, the boy with an old man's knowledge, revealed the disciplina to the Etruscans. The ancients therefore regarded Tarquinia as the cradle of Etruscan religion, and numerous Roman religious rites derived from Tarchuna — even in imperial times a collegium of sixty haruspices continued to exist there.

At the end of the seventh century tradition places here Demaratus, the Corinthian merchant and father of Tarquinius Priscus, who is said to have brought in Greek workmen. From Tarquinia the Tarquin dynasty moved to take power in Rome, where it reigned between the late seventh and the sixth century BC. After the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus in 509 BC, the city sheltered the deposed king, sent embassies to Rome asking for his recall, and backed his attempts at restoration by force — leading their armies against Rome in the battle Livy places at the Silva Arsia.

The archaic age was the city's greatest moment. On the coast the emporium of Gravisca opened, frequented by eastern Greek merchants, and on the Monterozzi the great funerary painting flourished. The style was renewed around 530 BC by the arrival of Ionian painters fleeing an Asia Minor conquered by the Persians.

After the crisis of the fifth century, deepened by the Etruscan defeat at Cumae in 474 BC, the fourth century brought a vigorous political, economic and artistic revival, linked by the tradition of the Elogia Tarquiniensia to the Spurinna family. Inscriptions carved in Julio-Claudian times in the sanctuary of the Ara della Regina celebrate Velthur, the first Etruscan commander to lead an army in Sicily, and Aulus, victorious at Caere, Arezzo and against the Latins. In this period the city ringed itself with powerful walls of macco blocks running some eight kilometres, built against threats from the Celts and from Rome.

The wars with Rome were fought in bouts between 358 and 351 BC, ending in a forty-year truce renewed in 308; the final surrender came in 280 BC, with the cession of the coastal and mining districts. In 181 BC a Roman colony was founded on the shore.

The modern town was Corneto until 1872, then Corneto Tarquinia, and was renamed Tarquinia in 1922 after the ancient city.