The etruscans in the Tuscia region

"Here laughs the Etruscan, one day, as he lay, with eyes to the ground watching the sea..." (V.Cardarelli).
That land that acted as Mother and foundation was covered by him during the eight centuries of his civilization by an endless series of monuments, the only tanigible sign of his human and historical existence.
In the Tuscia region - the old name for the present administrative reality established by the province of Viterbo - "the Etruscan mystery", even if stirring in the atmosphere of abandoned cities and vast and silent necropli its true identity is revealed more so than in other Etruscan areas.
Long before the Truscans became a part of history with the acquisition of writings, they were present in the numerous protovillanovian and villanovian necropoli (X-VIII cent. B.C.) where the bronze crested helmet and bowl that guarded the ashes already forecasted this first Italic civilization. It was then that other great cities (Tarquinia, Vulci, Velzna, Falerii), projected a new economic dimension, released different activities and new social turmoils; surrounded by the thousand by other centres strongly castled on tufaceous bastions, multiplied and used land wisely and rationally. In harmony with the cities of the living the cities of the dead descended into the bowels of mother earth to secure their roots, to guard and to hand down through time a smile full of hope for the Etruscans (VIII-I cent. B.C.) And the tomb became their immortal home using rock again as they did for their terrestrial home where they gathered a taste for beauty in jewels, ceramics, bronzes and furnishings. The face and the name and the family name of the man and the woman were handed down in the sarcophaguses where paintings encaptured the colour of the countryside and the sensual joy of life. Here in the Tuscia region, more than anywhere else, when well-known destiny decided on their decline, the Etruscan entrusted his breath of immortality in the rocky monumental necropoli by giving his rock friend and suggestive picture of the Fake Door the distressing mystery of life and death(IV-I cent. B.C.) Long bands unfold along the tufaceous slopes, in places that are still protected by an eternal mystery, where the bright green vegetation contrasts and enhances the dark red tuff. And on this very same portion of happy Etruscan land there are temples, chapels, aediculas, votive deposits belonging to a population considered the most religious in antiquity. Where incense no longer burns but in the splendid sun, where the haruspex no longer reads the internal organs except within the breeze, where sacrifices are no more except that of an entire people. And on the shores of the blue seas, where they gave its name, ports emerge from the waters and the earth where commerce brought culture and technology, taste and art.
This is the Tuscia, a land to discover in the name of culture, the first and greatest popoulation in Italy, aware in millenial paths, to warn the knowledge of life in deserted homes and the numerous necropoli, and in all areas that a deep human experience has made sacred.