Grotte di Castro: land of the Etruscans

Grotte di Castro - Grotte di Castro is an Italian town of 2 557 inhabitants in the province of Viterbo in Lazio. In Etruscan times, on a hill along the road that connects the town to Lake Bolsena, there is an important city identified for a long time with the name of Tire, while today it is generically referred to as Civita di Grotte di Castro, not knowing its ancient Etruscan name.

Unfortunately, systematic excavations of the ancient city have never been carried out, but sporadic. The Necropolis delle Pianezze, located east of the historic center, is made up of numerous tombs, simple or monumental, dug into the tuff and dating back to the 7th century BC. C; the numerous tombs are chambered and dug into the tuff. All the finds found in the tombs of Grotte di Castro are exhibited in the educational path of the Civita Museum, housed in one of the most beautiful Renaissance buildings in the country, designed in the second half of the sixteenth century by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, an illustrious architect of the sixteenth century. . The exhibition itinerary, which focuses on the customs and traditions of the Etruscan people, begins on the first floor. Through the time scale we can retrace the most important stages that marked the development of Grotte di Castro, in relation to the main events in human history. In the first room of the museum itinerary 'Male and female in the Etruscan world' are exhibited the funerary objects found in the graves of the necropolis of Vigna la Piazza and Centocamere. Going down to the ground floor, you enter the world of the Afterlife, and the exhibition space is totally dedicated to the Necropolis.