When I first joined Paolo in Umbria, we were looking at a piece of land on which to build a house. We cornered the owner one night at the bar and asked him how much he wanted for it. His reply? Questa è terra etrusca! — This is Etruscan land! It wasn’t just a reminder that Rome wasn’t built in a day (sorry, had to go there) and that these transactions take time. But what struck me was the word he chose. Not Italian land. Not Roman land. Etruscan land. People in this part of central Italy don’t tend to see themselves as descendants of Rome. They’re descended from the Etruscans — a civilization that was flourishing when Rome was still a boggy swamp.
Who were the Etruscans?
The Romans called them Etrusci or Tusci — which is where “Tuscany” comes from. Their origins have been debated since antiquity and modern genetic research still hasn’t entirely settled the question, largely because there’s not much Etruscan DNA out there to sample.
What we do know is that by around 900 BCE, a sophisticated civilization had taken hold across central Italy, from roughly north of what’s now Florence to past the Tiber River in the south. At their height, between about 700 and 400 BCE, the peoples we now call the Etruscans were the dominant power on the Italian peninsula — skilled traders, seafarers, metallurgists, and warriors. Their 12 major cities were organized into a loose confederation, though they likely didn’t identify themselves as one “people” the way modern humans identify with their nationality. But they shared a common religion and language, and enough cultural similarities that they’ve now been lumped into the same civilization.
A few things set them apart. Etruscan women had a status and visibility in public life that scandalized Greek and Roman commentators. Etruscans traded actively across the Mediterranean and developed a complex religious tradition centered on divination and the reading of natural signs. They were a fully realized civilization, but because of their relatively scant archaeological record — compared to the behemoth left behind by Ancient Rome — they often get labeled “mysterious.” (And “mysterious” is just a poetic way of saying, “we don’t know.”)
For example, the Roman road network gets all the glory — nobody ever says “all roads lead to Etruria.” But those Roman roads were in many cases built on routes the Etruscans had already engineered — connecting hilltop cities through difficult terrain and managing drainage and gradients. Rome repaved a system that largely already existed, but still gets all the credit.
The Romans held Etruscan priests, and particularly Etruscan augurs, in high esteem. The practice of haruspicy — reading the will of the gods from sacrificial animal entrails — was an Etruscan specialty, and Rome relied on haruspices well into the Imperial era. There was even a formal body of Etruscan sacred knowledge, the Etrusca Disciplina, that Roman authorities consulted in times of crisis.
Rome’s early kings, the Tarquins, were Etruscan. The toga has Etruscan roots and the Roman triumph — the big victory parade was, you guessed it — an Etruscan tradition. Even the fasces — the bundle of rods that became one of Rome’s symbols of authority — came from the Etruscans.
What Rome didn’t want was eventually lost to the ages, as is the case with the Etruscan language. It remains largely undeciphered, mostly because the scant texts that do survive are short tomb inscriptions or brief written passages that don’t illuminate much. It’s part of the aura around the Etruscans: we don’t know about them because they were mysterious — but they’re mysterious because of what we don’t know about them.
What Rome borrowed, stole and erased
The Romans were enthusiastic copycats, and nowhere more so than in their own backyard. What we think of as some of the greatest Roman achievements often originated in the civilizations they absorbed and eventually erased. This was particularly true of the Etruscans, who had already been running things in central Italy for centuries when the barefoot tribes on a bend in the Tiber were still building mud huts and Romulus was plotting the death of Remus.
For example, the Roman road network gets all the glory — nobody ever says “all roads lead to Etruria.” But those Roman roads were in many cases built on routes the Etruscans had already engineered — connecting hilltop cities through difficult terrain and managing drainage and gradients. Rome repaved a system that largely already existed, but still gets all the credit.
The Romans held Etruscan priests, and particularly Etruscan augurs, in high esteem. The practice of haruspicy — reading the will of the gods from sacrificial animal entrails — was an Etruscan specialty, and Rome relied on haruspices well into the Imperial era. There was even a formal body of Etruscan sacred knowledge, the Etrusca Disciplina, that Roman authorities consulted in times of crisis.
Rome’s early kings, the Tarquins, were Etruscan. The toga has Etruscan roots and the Roman triumph — the big victory parade was, you guessed it — an Etruscan tradition. Even the fasces — the bundle of rods that became one of Rome’s symbols of authority — came from the Etruscans.
What Rome didn’t want was eventually lost to the ages, as is the case with the Etruscan language. It remains largely undeciphered, mostly because the scant texts that do survive are short tomb inscriptions or brief written passages that don’t illuminate much. It’s part of the aura around the Etruscans: we don’t know about them because they were mysterious — but they’re mysterious because of what we don’t know about them.
Loosely put, the Roman approach to territorial expansion was simple: If you surrendered peacefully, you were absorbed. If you put up a fight, you were obliterated. Orvieto was the last major Etruscan city to fall to Rome, taken in 264 BCE after a prolonged siege. The Romans sacked it, enslaved much of the population, and built a replacement settlement on Lake Bolsena — the word Bolsena is a derivative of Volsinii. The old city was abandoned until the early Middle Ages.
Yet they didn’t quite wipe Velzna off the map. Archaeologists have found traces of the original Etruscan street plan beneath medieval Orvieto. The tufa plateau is honeycombed with Etruscan tunnels, cisterns, and caves, some open for visits. The stone gate at the bottom of Via della Cava is Etruscan. There are two archaeological museums housing some of the finest Etruscan collections in Italy. And the necropolis at Crocifisso del Tufo, just below the city walls, mimics Etruscans city layouts with its rectangular grid of “streets” along which tombs are located, each inscribed with the family name of the people once reposing inside.
Orvieto: The last Etruscan city
The Etruscans called it Velzna, or Volsinii. Perched on a plateau of volcanic tufa where the Paglia and Chiana rivers meet, it was one of the most significant cities in the Etruscan world. Scholars are increasingly convinced that was the site of the Fanum Voltumnae, the religious sanctuary where the confederation of 12 cities gathered each year.
Loosely put, the Roman approach to territorial expansion was simple: If you surrendered peacefully, you were absorbed. If you put up a fight, you were obliterated. Orvieto was the last major Etruscan city to fall to Rome, taken in 264 BCE after a prolonged siege. The Romans sacked it, enslaved much of the population, and built a replacement settlement on Lake Bolsena — the word Bolsena is a derivative of Volsinii. The old city was abandoned until the early Middle Ages.
Yet they didn’t quite wipe Velzna off the map. Archaeologists have found traces of the original Etruscan street plan beneath medieval Orvieto. The tufa plateau is honeycombed with Etruscan tunnels, cisterns, and caves, some open for visits. The stone gate at the bottom of Via della Cava is Etruscan. There are two archaeological museums housing some of the finest Etruscan collections in Italy. And the necropolis at Crocifisso del Tufo, just below the city walls, mimics Etruscans city layouts with its rectangular grid of “streets” along which tombs are located, each inscribed with the family name of the people once reposing inside.
San Casciano dei Bagni: Where the cultures convened
In 2022, archaeologists excavating the ancient sacred pool at the sanctuary of Bagno Grande made one of the most significant finds in decades: more than two dozen bronze votive statues, thousands of coins, and other offerings preserved in the thermal mud. Many of the objects bear inscriptions in both Etruscan and Latin — evidence that this place of worship and healing was also a scene of cultural overlap. The archaeological dig is ongoing. It’s rewriting what we know about the period of Roman ascendance and Etruscan decline, and the story is far from over.
I’ve written about the San Casciano site for National Geographic and Discover magazines, and that dig is going to be providing me with material for years. I often refer to myself as an archaeology nerd. And never will you see me nerd out more than when we visit the San Casciano dig for a private tour — a standard stop on our Allerona tours. I keep hoping one of our groups will be lucky enough to watch an artifact come out of the mud during our visit.
In Orvieto, I find myself thinking not of the medieval merchants or even the Romans, but of what was there before — a thriving, powerful city with markets, temples, houses and paved streets. A whole other city, of which so few physical traces remain. How mysterious!
By the way, that guy in Allerona never did give us a price for his plot of land, and we eventually moved on. Today, there’s a pretty garden on the site. Etruscan land, indeed.