A town for the dead
Most cemeteries grow by addition, grave after grave. The Banditaccia was organised like a town. Its thousands of tombs stand along streets, with small squares and whole neighbourhoods, over almost 200 hectares, and a funerary road runs through it for more than 2 km. It is one of the largest necropolises of the ancient world, and it copies the city of the living so closely that it is the best place to imagine the Etruscan city itself.
Why so much, so early? Caere was one of the richest cities of Etruria. Through its port at Pyrgi it traded with Carthage; it kept its own treasury at Delphi, the great sanctuary of the Greeks, and it was the main centre through which Greek pottery, especially Athenian, entered Etruria. The families that grew rich on this trade built their tombs here for nine centuries.
Nine centuries, five kinds of tomb
A walk through the Banditaccia is a walk through Etruscan history, and the types of tomb follow each other in order. The oldest, from the ninth century BCE, are pits holding the ashes of the dead in double-cone urns; with them come trench graves for those buried unburnt. From the seventh century BCE, families of high rank raised great tumuli, mounds over chambers cut into the tufa, and one mound often covers more than one tomb. In the sixth century cube-shaped tombs appear, lined up regularly along the funerary streets. Other tombs were simply cut into the rock in the shape of huts or houses.
Houses carved in the rock
This is what makes the Banditaccia unique. The house-shaped tombs carry a wealth of structural detail carved straight into the rock, and since Etruscan houses have almost vanished, these tombs are the only surviving evidence of Etruscan domestic architecture, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period. The Etruscans imagined the afterlife as a continuation of life, so the tomb was both a house and a home, furnished with what the dead would need.
The most famous interior is the Tomb of the Reliefs, built for the Matuna family. Its entrance was once flanked by two tufa lions; inside, a rectangular chamber with a double-pitched ceiling and two pillars has a bench for 31 burials, 13 niches for couples, and walls hung with household objects modelled in painted stucco.
What left the tombs
Many tombs were emptied long ago. Several tombs at Cerveteri, among them the Tomb of the Reliefs and the tombs of the Sarcophagi, of the Triclinium and of the Alcove, lost their contents to the private collection of the Marquis Campana; from there the objects went to museums in Italy and abroad, including the Louvre and the Hermitage. The most famous find came later. On 9 April 1881, on land belonging to Prince Francesco Ruspoli, about 400 fragments of terracotta came out of the ground. Felice Barnabei, founder of the museum of Villa Giulia, bought them for 4,000 lire as “terracotta scrap“. Put back together, they became the Sarcophagus of the Spouses.
Visiting the Banditaccia
The necropolis is part of the Parco archeologico di Cerveteri e Tarquinia and, with Tarquinia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In October 2026 it was open from Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00 to 19:30 (last tickets 18:30), closed on Mondays; a full ticket cost €13, and a UNESCO ticket valid four months for Cerveteri and Tarquinia cost €21. The Tomb of the Reliefs is usually seen through a glass screen and was listed as temporarily closed, so check before you go. The museum of Cerveteri, with finds from the tombs, is close to the site.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia” (1158).
- Ministero della Cultura, “Necropoli della Banditaccia”; “La Tomba dei Rilievi a Cerveteri”; press release on the restoration of the Sarcophagus of the Spouses (2025).
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Caere”.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: T. Huntsman, “Etruscan Language and Inscriptions” (2013).
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