Crocifisso del Tufo — An Etruscan City of the Dead
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
At the foot of the cliff, the Crocifisso del Tufo necropolis reveals a very different urban order. The tombs, mainly from the sixth to third centuries BCE, line small streets in regular blocks. Many carry inscriptions naming the dead and their families.
This planned cemetery is crucial because the Etruscan city above has been repeatedly rebuilt. Here, by contrast, the stone chambers preserve names, social organization and funerary practice with unusual clarity. The ancient settlement is generally identified with Velzna, though the exact relationship between Orvieto and the place called Volsinii in Roman sources has generated long scholarly debate.
Do not imagine the necropolis as a spooky suburb. It was a structured landscape of family memory. Its neat geometry suggests that even death occupied regulated civic space.