Etruscans
The people who were here before Rome left almost no buildings and an enormous number of graves. Two of those cemeteries are UNESCO sites, and both are an hour from the city.
20 things to book6 placesthe nearest is a 51 min drive from Rome
The Etruscans built their houses in wood and their tombs in rock, so what survives is the underground half of the civilisation. Cerveteri is a city of round tumuli with streets between them; Tarquinia is a field of underground chambers, a few dozen of which are painted, and the paintings are the best evidence anyone has of what Etruscan life looked like.
Beyond the two famous ones, the whole of the Tuscia is Etruscan: sunken roads cut metres deep through the tufo, tombs in the sides of every gorge, and museums in half the hill towns holding what came out of them.
What this means in practice is that an Etruscan day is spent below ground level and in museums. The tombs are the site; the objects that came out of them are half an hour away in a palazzo. Doing one without the other is the commonest way to come home thinking there was less to see than there is.
A guide changes this page more than it changes any other on the site. Painted chambers are lit and locked, opened on a rotation, and read very differently once somebody tells you what the banqueting scene is doing on the wall of a grave. Without that, the honest description of a necropolis is that it is a field of doorways.
Bring a torch and shoes you do not mind on wet stone. Tomb chambers are cut into tufo, which holds damp; the sunken roads hold it too, and are cool and green even in the middle of August, which makes them the walk to take in the Tuscia when everything above ground is unbearable.
Cerveteri and Tarquinia, both within an hour of Rome and about half an hour of each other on the coast road. A guide is worth it here more than almost anywhere: without one, the tombs are rooms. Cerveteri is the one to walk — streets of round tumuli under pines — and Tarquinia the one to look at, because the painting is underground and the museum in the town holds what came out.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
On two wheelsA guided ride of about 25 km on a semi-loop from Camping Europing in Tarquinia to Montalto di Castro, crossing the seasonal Arrone stream and taking in the old town of Montalto …
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With your handsThe longer Cerrosughero format: time in the olive grove with a picnic, plus a tour of the mill.
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With your handsA visit to a Canino mill producing organic Canino DOP extra virgin olive oil, with a guided tasting of four oils served on bruschetta.
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On the trailGuided walk through the tumulus tombs of the Banditaccia, carved to reproduce the inside of Etruscan houses, and along the Via degli Inferi, the sunken road that led to the buri…
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On the trailGuided visit to the tumulus tombs of the Banditaccia and to the Tomb of the Reliefs, carved in the fourth century BC with stucco copies of household objects, plus the museum hol…
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Off roadA four-hour guided off-road ride across farmland and Mediterranean scrub to the Cerveteri waterfalls, where the operator says there is a swim stop.
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Off roadA three-hour guided ride on dirt tracks between olive groves and vineyards through the Etruscan territory of Cerveteri, with a stop at the Cascatella di Sant'Antonio where the o…
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Off roadFive hours in total: three on a quad or dune buggy across the Cerveteri countryside to the Banditaccia Etruscan necropolis, then two hours visiting the tombs of the UNESCO site.
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Off roadThe operator's longest and roughest guided ride: five hours, eighty per cent on unsurfaced tracks, with the Cerveteri waterfalls as the turning point.
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Off roadA two-hour guided ride on a quad or dune buggy through the Etruscan countryside around Cerveteri, half of it on unsurfaced tracks.
See the dayThe vie cave: passages cut down through tufo, sometimes twenty metres deep, still walkable and still going somewhere. Around Blera, Barbarano, Sovana and Pitigliano. They are the cheapest Etruscan day there is, they are outdoors, and they are shaded from end to end.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
In the hot waterThe water leaves the ground at 58°C, and on Saturday you can still be in it at 1am.
€12 per person
Books on termedeipapi.it
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In the hot waterFive hours in thermal water up to 58°C and nothing else to plan that day.
€12 per person
Books on tusciaterme.it
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With your handsA ten-hour day out of Rome with a private driver: your choice between Caprarola with the Farnese palace or Sutri with the Roman amphitheatre and Etruscan necropolis, then an oli…
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On the trailA collection of tree and herbaceous peonies laid out as a garden below Vitorchiano, in flower from the end of March to the end of May: the single-flowered shrubs first, then the…
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In the hot waterThe thermal spa of the Salus Terme hotel on the edge of Viterbo, bookable for the day without staying overnight.
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In the hot waterA night ticket to the open-air thermal pool of Terme dei Papi, valid from 21:00 to 01:00.
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In the hot waterA cave cut into the rock where hyperthermal water surfaces at 58 degrees and fills the room with steam, used as a natural Turkish bath.
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In the hot waterA twenty-minute walk through alternating cold and hot hyperthermal water, meant to stimulate circulation in the legs.
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In the hot waterA twenty-minute session in a sensory pool for a maximum of five people at a time, with colour therapy, hydromassage and music heard with the ears just under the water while lyin…
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In the hot waterA day ticket to the large open-air thermal pool fed by the Bullicame spring, the historic spa of Viterbo.
See the dayDriving time from the middle of Rome, on the road network and without traffic. It tells you whether the day stands up; it is not a timetable.
Getting there
The day stays yours: you leave when you want, stop where you want, and come back when the light goes.
Affiliate link — you pay their price, never more, and they pay us. You book with Localrent, and anything about that booking goes through them.
See prices on LocalrentNo parking to find, no wrong turns, and you leave when the day is done.
Affiliate link — you pay their price, never more, and they pay us. You book with Welcome Pickups, and anything about that booking goes through them.
See prices on Welcome PickupsTarquinia for the paintings, Cerveteri for the scale and the architecture of the tombs. Cerveteri is closer to Rome. Doing both in one day is possible and makes for a long one — the two sites are about half an hour apart.
Tarquinia if you want the paintings, which are the reason the Etruscans are more than a footnote. Cerveteri if you want to walk through a city of tombs and understand how they built. Both are UNESCO sites, both are inside an hour of Rome, and they are about half an hour from each other.
Vulci in the Maremma, with a bridge and a gorge and a castle over it. Sutri, where an amphitheatre is cut down into the rock rather than built up out of it. Norchia and Blera, where the tombs are carved into the walls of gorges. And a museum in half the hill towns of the Tuscia, holding what the fields around them gave up.
Yes, and it makes a long day. They are on the same coast road and about half an hour apart, so the driving is not the problem — the problem is that both have a necropolis and a museum, and four of those in one day is more tomb than most people want. If you only have one day, pick one and add its museum.
The tumuli at Cerveteri usually are: it is a landscape of mounds and doorways with steps going down into them, and it works as a place to explore rather than a place to be told about. The painted chambers at Tarquinia are behind glass and viewed a few at a time, which asks more patience.
Cerveteri and Tarquinia are both on the coast north of the city and the drive is straightforward. The sunken roads and the gorge tombs are the part that really wants a car, because they are between villages rather than in them. Where an operator collects you or meets you at a station, the activity page says so.
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