For those of you who have got to know me it will have been no surprise to hear that this year we initiated an Etruscan tour. This fascinating and mysterious culture has long been a passion of mine and living as we do in such close range to ancient Etruria it was really only a matter of time before we organized something on the theme.

The tour was a great success and will be on the program again. It was in fact a bit of a novelty for us as unlike our other tours which see you comfortably installed at Camiano Piccolo near Montefalco this one involved some travelling. The hotels were first rate, though, and in the case of La Fortezza at Sorano spectacular, but more on this later.

The tour started in beautiful late summer weather in Rome. Much of what we call Roman civilization is in fact of Etruscan origin, so a wander round the Palatine, Capitoline and Forum areas finds many references to them. There were three Etruscan kings here in pre-republican times and the Forum to this day is drained by Etruscan engineered tunnels built in the seventh century BC! A visit to the Villa Giulia in the Borghese Gardens was also included and with its unequalled collection of Etruscan artefacts is an excellent introduction to the places we were later to visit.

The basic plan of the tour is a loop starting in Rome and going north up the Tyrrhenian coast –Tyrrenoi was the old Greek word for the Etruscans – and then moving inland to Florence and Fiesole as the northernmost point. But before leaving Rome we couldn’t resist a historical detour to see the Caravaggio masterpieces still in situ near our hotel by the Pantheon, and of course tasting the delights of restaurants in the Campo de’ Fiori and Piazza Navona areas.

After the bustle of Rome we found our first Etruscan site of Cerveteri beautifully peaceful. A tour like this certainly takes you off the beaten track. The Banditaccia necropolis here with its whole town of beehive tombs is set in typical Etruscan fashion on a plateau across a ravine from where the ancient city once was. Looking at these distinctive cylindrical constructions it becomes clear where the inspiration came from for the great imperial period tombs in Rome such as that of Hadrian, now Castel Sant’Angelo. And it’s also interesting to speculate on what might have happened had the Romans transferred their city here as the historical sources make it clear they were seriously considering doing at the time of the Gallic sack of Rome in 380 BC.

Our next stop was to be the very pretty town of Tuscania whose name preserves the word –Tusci – that the Romans used for their Etruscan neighbors. By now we were in the heartland of the ancient Etruscans and the landscape has that characteristic combination of towns built in volcanic tufa on plateaus surrounded by ravines, appearing much as they would have two and a half thousand years ago. We planned to use this as our base to visit the major Etruscan city of Tarquinia nearby, but Tuscania itself is a delightful place in its own right and its great Basilica of built as early as the eighth century AD would be the pride of any Italian town. There were some gastronomic highpoints here too, with a dinner at our hotel which all agreed was one of the most exquisite we’d ever had, and another in a Pizzeria where the pizzas were so big they had to be brought in on two plates each!

Tarquinia was as fascinating as we had hoped and the wonderful terracotta winged horses from a temple at Pyrgi – Tarquinia’s port town - that are the pride of the excellent museum take your breath away. The painted tombs, quite different from those at Cerveteri, also had no difficulty in living up to their reputation. We may no longer have much trouble translating what fragments of the Etruscan language have survived, but looking at these unsettling but beautiful scenes of dancing, feasting, violent sport and weird eroticism that are at once so immediate yet so strange makes it clear that we are a long way from understanding major areas of this fascinating culture. It’s also easy to see why D.H.Lawrence was so taken by the Etruscans, though the highly emotional judgements that he makes in his very readable book “Etruscan Places” are much at variance with what we now know of the historical reality.

Our next stop was the impressive ruins of the Roman colony of Cosa, established after the Etruscan wars in the third century BC to keep control of the territory confiscated from Vulci whose rather melancholy site we also visited. Cosa has a fine circuit of cyclopean defensive walls and a fabulous position looking across to the Argentario peninsular which as its name suggests was one of the sources of Etruscan metallurgical wealth. Ore deposits such as those found there provide one of the most plausible explanations for the extraordinary richness of the first phase of Etruscan history. And it happens to look down on the very beach where the fugitive Caravaggio was murdered, stepping off a boat here on the run from Malta. It’s such coincidences as this that help to explain why I enjoy living in Italy so much!

After a delicious seafood lunch in Orbetello we then proceeded inland to an area known as the Upper Maremma which was to be our base for the next four days. The principal town here is Pitigliano which in my view is one of the most extraordinary locations in Italy. Perched on the same plateau surrounded by deep ravines cut in the volcanic rock that was occupied by the Etruscan city it has an atmosphere of palpable antiquity. One really feels the Etruscan presence here, helped also by the luxuriant greenery which proliferates in the rich volcanic soil and gives the whole area a certain “lost cities in the jungle “ feel.

Our hotel was not in Pitigliano however but in close by Sorano which is a small and equally picturesque version of its larger neighbour. The hotel is in the Orsini castle above the town which in its turn is high above the river in the ravine below and the views from our rooms were spectacular. It is said that in the stormy Middle Ages this castle was never taken and that it provided refuge for the cruel and oppressive Orsini Duke who came here by a hidden tunnel when there was a popular revolt in Pitigliano. A bit later on it provided refuge for Jews expelled from an increasingly intolerant Papal State and one of the surprises of Pitigliano is in fact its considerable Jewish ghetto complete with synagogue which has recently been done up as a kind of museum and provides a fascinating insight into how life used to be lived.

The Etruscan presence here is found mainly in the necropoli hidden in the forests round about which contain a wealth of interesting tombs, some cut almost as sculptures out of the soft volcanic tufa. But the most extraordinary thing here in my view are the “Vie Etrusche” or Etruscan Streets that are deep channels cut into the rock without any obvious explanation. They average about 3 metres in width and the largest of them have sections up to 30 metres deep! They are usually found in the vicinity of the necropoli and the most plausible account of them is that they were made for religious processions. The Etruscans had a reputation in ancient Italy as the most religious of peoples, much of early Roman religion coming in fact from them, and it’s interesting to note that there is now a religious procession along one near Pitigliano timed for the spring equinox whose origins are lost in the mists of time.

From our base at Sorano we also made some trips to places a bit further away such as the major Etruscan centre of Orvieto, the hot springs of Saturnia, and the very impressive ruins of Roselle, once a maritime city on the edge of an inlet that is now the plain of the town of Grosseto. There is a circuit several kilometres long here of cyclopean defensive walls with the biggest blocks of stone I’ve ever seen, placed one on top of another sometime in the 6th century BC. We paid a visit to the lonely site of Talamone on our way home too, perched on a promontory looking out to sea, and a reminder that in ancient times the Etruscans were known as primarily a maritime power whose piracy – or so it was called by their rivals the Greeks – was the scourge of the western Mediterranean.

After Sorano our route now took us into the northern part of old Etruria and specifically to the mountain top town of Volterra. Here there is an Etruscan gate through the walls still in use with, like Perugia, the remains of the heads of the three tutelary deities still in place above it. And the museum is excellent with an extraordinary range of alabaster sculpture for which Volterra was once the exporting centre. Noticeable too on many of the figures reclining on the lids of the cinerary urns is a gesture of the index and little finger which is current in Italy to this day.

Florence was probably not even a village by the river when Fiesole dominated this stretch of the Arno in pre- roman times, and the Florentines always had a certain anxiety in establishing their ancient history credentials. This meant that from the renaissance on Etruscan finds had a particular appeal as they established a kind of pedigree, artistic as well as political, for the city, and the Grand Duke Cosimo I in particular was an avid collector. This has meant that the Archaeological museum here is second only to the Villa Giulia in Rome and has what is perhaps the gem of all surviving Etruscan art, the great Chimera from Arezzo together with a wealth of other material. The room with the display of erotic pottery of which the Etruscans seemed to have discerning collectors – it is all high quality Greek work – on its own makes a visit here worthwhile! It’s worth pointing out in this context that a good 80% of all ancient Greek pottery in the world has come not from Greece itself but from Etruscan tombs.

After Florence and Fiesole our path was now southwards towards home in Umbria. We had traversed a major part of old Etruria and seen, if not all, then at least the most significant sites. We decided against a visit to Chiusi – Old Clusium, the home of the great warlord Lars Porsenna who terrorized early Rome, and opted for a stop at Cortona instead, before passing by Lake Trasimeno and returning to Montefalco. Perugia we visited the next day, its great Etruscan gate as impressive as ever, and the tour finished with a visit to the Torgiano wine museum which served to remind us that this too, like so many other aspects of life and death in Italy, had its origins here in the Etruscan world.