Etruscan Cerveteri

The Etruscans (ee-TRUSS-cans) of Northern Italy believed that it was important to keep cemeteries well separated from where people lived. You could not bury anyone inside the sacred boundary of the city (the pomerium). But they wanted their dead relatives to feel comfortable. So, beginning about 700 BC, the Etruscans built special cities of the dead to bury people in.

For these cemeteries, the Etruscans cut into the soft tufa stone that underlays much of northern Italy. They cut out tombs in the shape of their own houses, with doors and windows, and inside they carved beds for the dead to lie on, and pillows, and sometimes chairs as well.

Each tomb could hold many dead people, so you could be buried in the same tomb where your parents and grandparents were already buried. Inside the tombs the Etruscans put all the things people might need in their next life – pots and pans, plates, pitchers, ropes, knives, oil lamps.

Often people put in Greek vases, that had been made in Corinth or Athens and brought over to Italy on ships to sell to the Etruscans. Most of the Greek vases we have today were found in these Etruscan tombs.

Of course not everybody could afford to build such big fancy tombs. Poor people were buried in plainer tombs, cut right into the wall.