About  .  Contact  .  Donation A painted chamber tomb from the mid-5th century BCE was discovered in the Monterozzi Necropolis of Tarquinia which was first detected in late 2022 but only recently announced reveals vibrant wall frescoes depicting scenes of dance and a workshop of artisans This is the first painted burial with a figurative frieze to be unearthed in Tarquinia in a century The tomb was discovered during an inspection by archaeologists from the Superintendence of Archaeology Researchers identified the partially buried chamber—now designated as Tomb 6438—while examining looted and collapsed tombs Archaeo-speleologists working in the area came across a collapse along the left wall exposing an intact burial chamber behind the debris the Superintendence kept the discovery confidential until the structure could be secured and stabilized the archaeologist responsible for the discovery and now director of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence the excavation revealed an intricate history of both natural and human disturbances “After restoring access to the burial chamber and installing a metal door the archaeological excavation demonstrated that all the material collected did not belong to the grave goods of the painted tomb which dates back to the mid-fifth century BCE from the end of the Orientalizing period,” Maras said including fragments of Attic red-figure pottery The painted walls of the tomb provide a view into Etruscan culture and beliefs that are almost unequaled The left wall is the best preserved; it bears a lively scene of four figures—two men and two women—dancing to the sound of a flutist This depiction reflects the Etruscans’ deep appreciation for music and festivity The back wall is more damaged from the collapse of the structure but shows one woman is fascinating because it reveals a metallurgical workshop in use It has been suggested that this may represent the mythical forge of Sethlans or a depiction of the deceased’s family trade Superintendent Margherita Eichberg said: “The extraordinary quality of the paintings is already evident in the first restoration carried out by Adele Cecchini and Mariangela Santella which highlights the refined details of the flute player and one of the dancers.” Due to the tomb’s delicate condition an extensive conservation project is underway The restoration specialists are reinforcing the walls of the tomb and conducting multispectral imaging analysis on the pigments to reconstruct their original colors a small guardhouse will be built at the entrance to maintain a stable climate inside the chamber Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la provincia di Viterbo e per l’Etruria Meridionale and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()) Learn how to describe the purpose of the image (opens in a new tab) Leave empty if the image is purely decorative Extraordinary discovery at the Unesco site of Tarquinia where archaeologists have found a new painted chamber tomb: the paintings on the walls show dance and workshop scenes although it was announced by the Viterbo Superintendency only in the last few hours It all begins during an inspection by the Soprintendenza following the opening of some cavities in the ground: the exceptional discovery took place in the Etruscan necropolis of Monterozzi confirmed that they were tombs already visited by clandestine diggers in the past one of the tombs concealed a secret that was still intact: the collapse of a wall had revealed a deeper burial chamber decorated with extraordinarily vividly colored painted scenes.This new tomb was dedicated to the memory of Franco Adamo a renowned restorer of Tarquinia’s painted tombs who passed away in May 2022 The find represents a major event in Etruscan archaeology bringing to light a glimpse of life and culture more than two thousand years ago The discovery is the result of the work of the Soprintendenza di Viterbo e dell’Etruria Meridionale and in particular the archaeologists Daniele F Maras and Rossella Zaccagnini of the Ministry of Culture together with external collaborators Gloria Adinolfi and Rodolfo Carmagnola while the excavation was conducted by Archeomatica s.r.l.s. and the restoration of the surfaces by Adele Cecchini and Mariangela Santella In order to prevent the site from being compromised by grave robbers or careless visitors the Superintendency has maintained the utmost secrecy about the excavation operations Thanks to an extraordinary grant from the Ministry of Culture archaeologists were able to conduct a meticulous intervention to secure the tomb and preserve its delicate balance: for these reasons the news was announced two years after the actual discovery “After restoring access to the burial chamber,” explains Daniele F the archaeological officer in charge of the discovery now director of the National Archaeological Museum in Florence “and once a metal door had been installed the archaeological excavation showed that all the material collected did not belong to the trousseau of the painted tomb from the end of the Orientalizing period.” The archaeological investigation revealed a unique and complex situation The painted tomb had been dug deep beneath a pre-existing burial grave robbers had managed to penetrate the tomb by piercing the closing slab the collapse of the upper chamber brought with it debris and objects mixing them with the remains of the lower tomb All that remains of what once constituted the grave goods of the painted tomb are a few fragments of Attic red-figure pottery evidence of the value of the objects laid with the deceased the real treasure of the find is the frescoes decorating the walls of the burial chamber offer a unique insight into Etruscan culture The left wall is animated by a frenetic dance: men and women move in a circle around an elegant flute player in a scene that expresses the vitality and taste for celebration typical of the Etruscan people the figures of a woman-perhaps the deceased-and two young men emerge but part of the decoration has been irretrievably lost due to a collapse Scholars speculate that it may represent the mythical workshop of the god Sethlans (Etruscan equivalent of Hephaestus) or a royal workshop belonging to the buried family Restoration work is still ongoing and requires extreme precision “The extraordinary level of the paintings,” comments superintendent Margita Eichberg with satisfaction “is already evident in the first piece of restoration which highlights the refinement of the details of the figures of the flutist and one of the dancers.” Adds Daniele Maras this is the first new painted tomb with figured frieze to be discovered in Tarquinia and it promises to be very intriguing because of its history artistic level and some of the scenes depicted The conservation project includes the construction of a protective structure around the tomb equipped with a thermal break door to ensure optimal climatic conditions archaeologists are applying advanced multispectral imaging technologies to recover the missing colors of ancient pigments Early tests have already yielded surprising results restoring new light to these extraordinary vestiges of Etruscan funerary art archaeologists continue to study the collected material to better understand the historical and social context of the tomb The long-term goal is to make the site accessible to the public allowing people to take a closer look at this extraordinary testament to Etruscan art and culture 6438 is not only a great discovery for Italian archaeology but a key piece in rediscovering the identity of a people who through the beauty of their funerary paintings continue to tell their story thousands of years later The project can provide enough clean energy to power more than 35,000 households has successfully completed the Tarquinia solar park in Italy marking a significant step in the country’s green energy transition The solar park boasts an installed capacity of 51.4MWp (megawatt peak) and features more than 94,000 fixed solar modules The project has the capacity to deliver clean energy sufficient to power more than 35,000 households construction and installation of the photovoltaic panels BayWa r.e.’s role will transition to overseeing the operation and maintenance (O&M) of the solar farm Italy managing director Alessandra Toschi said: “The completion of the Tarquinia solar park represents a crucial step in our efforts to drive the energy transition in Italy Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis “This project demonstrates that it is possible to actively contribute to the decarbonisation of the country while respecting the unique characteristics of the region “We are proud to be able to provide renewable energy to more than 35,000 households while contributing to enhancing biodiversity and preserving the landscape.” The company noted that during the project’s development significant mitigation measures were taken to harmonise the solar park with the local environment Europe South West Projects director Céline Tran said: “It is great to see this solar farm commissioned as a result of the remarkable efforts of our Italian team “We are strongly committed to the attractive Italian market with our teams active in on and offshore wind Last December, Enfinity Global secured a €118m ($1298.17m) deal to build four utility-scale solar plants in Lazio The four plants will generate 172 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity annually powering around 64,000 homes and reducing CO₂ emissions by 69,000 tonnes Give your business an edge with our leading industry insights View all newsletters from across the GlobalData Media network Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e PaesaggioThe Etruscan tomb uncovered at the Monterozzi necropolis near Tarquinia features bright paintings on three of its walls Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient tomb adorned with stunning paintings in Tarquinia a pre-Roman civilization that thrived in central Italy between the eighth and third centuries B.C.E. While exploring newly-discovered tombs within the Monterozzi necropolis in 2022 archaeologists found yet another room hidden beneath a collapsed burial they found vibrant paintings depicting dancers and a rare metal workshop scene that may be linked to the Etruscan mythology after two years of excavations and restorations Italian officials have announced their remarkable discovery and revealed stunning details about the 2,500-year-old tomb: officials from Italy’s Superintendency of Archaeology and Landscape traveled to the central Italian town of Tarquinia to examine cavities that had opened in the soil near Monterozzi necropolis They discovered a series of tombs beneath the ground and while they’d been looted during ancient times one still held a priceless treasure: wall paintings depicting Etruscan culture Archaeologists kept the tomb a secret while they excavated it and worked to restore the paintings but now they’re revealing what they found within — and on — its walls Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e PaesaggioArchaeologists have spent the past two years excavating the tomb there were just a few pieces of pottery left inside but the painted walls are still mostly intact The funerary art that adorns the tomb includes various scenes of Etruscan life and culture providing valuable insight into the ancient civilization Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e PaesaggioThe painting on the tomb’s left wall depicts men and women dancing around a flutist Three walls of the tomb are decorated with bright paintings though one of them has partially collapsed The left wall depicts two men and two women dancing around a flute player wearing a robe while the back wall contains the figures of two more young men and another woman who may potentially be the person once buried in the tomb the god Sethlans was associated with fire and metalworking so it may be meant to depict the deity’s legendary workshop The painting may also indicate that the person buried in the tomb was from a metalworking family In a social media announcement from the Superintendency of Archaeology “The extraordinary level of the paintings is evident already in the first piece of restoration… which highlights the refinement of the details of the figures.” Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e PaesaggioA closer look at the left wall of the tomb Archaeologists are still working to restore this newly-discovered tomb and uncover its secrets The team has plans to build a protective structure around the site equipped with a door to control climate conditions experts are using advanced imaging technologies to identify missing or damaged pigments on the tomb’s walls this is the first new painted tomb with a figurative frieze to be discovered in Tarquinia and it promises to be very intriguing for its history The long-term goal is to make the tomb accessible to the public allowing visitors to experience firsthand the vibrant culture and legacy of the Etruscans After reading about the painted Etruscan tomb found in Italy, learn more about King Tut’s tomb and why people believe it’s cursed. Then, go inside 11 astonishing underground cities from around the world Metrics details Etruria contained one of the great early urban civilisations in the Italian peninsula during the first millennium BC but relatively little with scientific data We have addressed the unusual location of twenty inhumations found in the sacred heart of the Etruscan city of Tarquinia contrasting with the typical contemporary cremations found in cemeteries on the edge of the city The cultural evidence suggests that the six skeletons were also distinctive in their ritualization and memorialisation the scientific evidence of osteoarchaeology and ancient DNA has established that these appear to show mobility diversity and violence through an integrated bioarchaeological approach The combination of multiple lines of evidence makes major strides towards a deeper understanding of the role of these extraordinary individuals in the life of the early city of Etruria It was interconnected to other populations of the Mediterranean especially the Greeks and the Latins (later Romans) the Etruscan culture was set apart within the scenery of the Mediterranean in terms of language and social organisation especially from the point of view of gender relations Etruscan ways challenged the traditional norms of the classical world and were considered alternative in classical written sources Direct Etruscan written sources are lost and this is probably one reason for the relatively little scholarly attention applied to this culture outside Italy where archaeological excavations take place and support research Time and Place. Map of Central Italy showing location of Tarquinia and modelled dates of six skeletons under study. The location of the six skeletons within the ‘monumental complex’ of Tarquinia Inset shows the position of the monumental complex within the site of Tarquinia whose walls and gates are indicated in red During the course of excavations over the last thirty years starting at the end of the Bronze Age (tenth century BC) since the twenty individuals were clearly inhumed within a sacred area within the city limits and memorialised through a system of signs that kept emerging over the centuries This contrasts with the major cemeteries that encircle the city This striking archaeological evidence is the stimulation to explore in this article the exceptional nature of a sample of six representative skeletons from the twenty by asking a series of cultural questions with scientific as well as archaeological evidence: Why were these individuals buried in a sacred area of the city Why did all the skeletons share the same practice of inhumation and memorialisation Were there other characteristics that they held in common Did all these individuals have a common ancestry with other Etruscans communities Were these people born locally or elsewhere based on forensic science and palaeopathology The presence of secure dating greatly enhances the interpretation of our other data sources The construction of a local strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) reference set for the area of Tarquinia with which the values of our human remains can be compared Our reference set has focused on sediment (soil) samples taken from the Civita plateau and cremated young and older children (1–10 years of age) from the nearby Iron Age necropolis of Villa Bruschi Falgari A summary of the chronological, spatial, osteological, δ13C, δ15N, 87Sr/86Sr, δ18O, 14C and aDNA analyses is reported in Table 1. Other more detailed information for each analyses is reported in the Supplementary Tables Scatter plots with (A) carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) and (B) strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18O) values of the six individuals from Tarquinia Civita divided for sex and different chronologies a conservative estimate of the BASr of all these data suggests that the range 0.7090–0.7095 characterises the local area of Tarquinia The initial summary of the six Tarquinian individuals (reduced to five with sufficient levels of endogenous DNA) and their broad sequencing results, contamination estimates, and uniparental markers, can be found in Supplementary Table S4 All five individuals carry mitochondrial haplogroups typical of post-Neolithic Europe (Table 1 and Supplementary Table S8) None of the five individuals share a common mitochondrial haplogroup Details can be found in the Supplementary Notes The modern populations are labelled by broad region The newly reported individuals are indicated by labels the new individuals with the exceptions of Individual 14 and Individual 11 could be successfully modelled using Italy Beaker as a single source could be successfully modelled as a two-way mixture of Italy Beaker and YamnayaSamara which suggests that the Italian Beaker individual used as the source (I1979) may have had insufficient Steppe-related ancestry to serve as a source for Individual 14 The model suggested proportions of 84–92% Italy Beaker and 8–26% additional YamnayaSamara (Steppe-related) ancestry this pilot study adds the complementary detail that relates to understanding of some of her population unusually inhumed within the city limits Of the six individuals of Tarquinia considered in this study two were males (Individuals 10 and 19) and four were females (Individuals 8 14) with age categories ranging from young to old adult 10 and 12) presented signs of physiological stress (i.e. 14 and 19) showed signs of mechanical stress (i.e. These signs indicate difficult living conditions during growth as well as prolonged and strenuous physical activities Modelled dietary protein sources based on Nitrogen and Carbon stable isotope measurements from the six individuals compared with flora and fauna from the region Density plot showing strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) values Density plot of 87Sr/86Sr values for the six individuals from Tarquinia Civita children from Tarquinia Villa Bruschi Falgari and other baseline values (e.g. Red dots: Tarquinia Civita individuals; green diamonds: Tarquinia Villa Bruschi Falgari children; blue squares: Tarquinia soil we can infer that one of these isotopic outliers (Individual 11) not only spent their early life away from Tarquinia as shown by the radiogenic strontium isotopic values but also had ancestry from a region as distant as the Baltic The other four that were sequenced in sufficient detail conform convincingly with previous individuals who have been sequenced from first millennium BC central Italy and thus appear to have a more local ancestry each ancient individual is projected independently using underlying modern genetic variation and since all have a proportion of missing genotypes their closeness to each other cannot be interpreted further Rather we could say that all new individuals from Tarquinia (with the exception of the outlier Individual 11) cluster with Italian and West Mediterranean populations on the cline of known central Italian Iron Age genetic variation Modern perceptions of cultural difference often focus substantially on outward bodily appearance and it is interesting to note that three out of five of these Tarquinian individuals are predicted to have had blue eyes the diversity of these early populations may have had a potential visual impact beyond any difference in material culture Such indications need further investigation Overview of the state of preservation and location of the injuries of the six skeletons under study (by Lucrezia Rodella) δ15N and δ13C isotope results suggest a mixed fish and terrestrial diet δ15N and δ13C results suggest a terrestrial diet relatively rich in meat δ15N and δ13C isotope results suggest a marine-dominated diet δ15N and δ13C istope results suggest a relatively low marine diet δ15N and δ13C results suggest a marine dominated diet Further details of the analyses are reported in the Supplementary Notes The six skeletons analysed here were already marked as different by their funerary rite and their place of deposition The study of the osteological biographies of some of the unusual individuals has highlighted their difference on a range of criteria The individuals from the urban centre were inhumed were diverse amongst themselves in appearance were likely to have a history of mobility that was apparently quite distant and were memorialised by ideological markers placed above them these individuals give insights into the level of violence and poor living conditions that were inherent in the social and political changes at the foundations of the early city The evidence suggests that the six individuals had varied diets dominated by cereals and marine fish where the consumption of meat and plants varied substantially showing no gender preference and complementing impressions seen in the later visual culture of these communities the six individuals embedded in the stratigraphy of the Civita plateau have thus unwittingly offered through osteological and other scientific analyses a narrative of themselves and their living conditions The exceptionality of the type of burial and its memorability in a sacred area help to qualify them as individuals selected by the community for rituals aimed at consolidating the community around the ancestral core of the ‘monumental complex’ whose importance had already been grasped by the archaeological research carried out over the last forty years we will be able to discover if they share these characteristics with the other fourteen inhumed skeletons at the monumental complex and to what extent they differ from the vast majority of the community We will also be able to examine the characteristics of those buried in standard cemeteries subject to the limits imposed by cremation Mass spectrometry was performed in the Leibniz Laboratory at the University of Kiel (Germany) Enamel powders were reacted with H3PO4 at 75C under vacuum on a Kiel IV carbonate preparation device interfaced with a Finnigan MAT 253 mass spectrometer Samples were referenced against two international carbonate standards NBS-19 (δ13C =  + 1.95‰ V-PDB; δ18O =  − 2.20) and IAEA-603 (δ13C + 2.46 V-PDB; δ18O =  − 2.37 V-PDB) and two internal enamel standards (CM1 and ER 1) For further details of the extractive methodology used see the Supplementary Notes Cremated tooth enamel and petrous bones from Tarquinia Villa Bruschi were analysed at Cardiff Earth Laboratory for Trace element and Isotope Chemistry (CELTIC) pigmentation profile analysis and kinship analysis can be found in Supplemental Information The current research was accomplished following the relevant regulations for the treatment of ancient human remains Permits for osteological and isotopic analyses were granted by the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Provincia di Viterbo e Per L'Etruria Meridionale Raw FASTQ and aligned BAM files are available through the European Nucleotide Archive under accession number PRJEB74104 All other data are fully available within the Supplementary Information Other data are fully available within the Supplementary Information The Spatial Dynamics of a Mediterranean Civilisation 1200–500 B.C (Cambridge University Press Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore: commedia da fare The Two Cultures (Cambridge University Press Architectural choices in Etruscan sacred areas: Tarquinia in its mediterranean setting In Architecture in Ancient Central Italy: Connections in Etruscan and Early Roman Building (ed Aggiornamenti e novità sulle deposizioni di bambini in abitato a Tarquinia Il caso dell’individuo 9 del ‘complesso monumentale’ Archeologia dell'infanzia nell'Italia preromana (ed L’abitato e le sue mura: Indagini di topografia storica In Making Cities Economies of Production and Urbanisation in Mediterranean Europe 1000–500 BCE (eds M The Tarquinia project: A summary of 25 years of excavation Microhistory: Two or three things that I know about it In New Perspectives on Historical Writing (ed Osteobiography as microhistory: Writing from the bones up Fischer, A. et al. 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Archaeometry 50, 925–950. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2008.00441.x (2008) Principles of Stable Isotope Geochemistry (Prentice Hall Stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in human tooth enamel: Identifying breastfeeding and weaning in prehistory Brief communication: the London atlas of human tooth development and eruption Neonatal lines in the enamel of primary teeth—A morphological and scanning electron microscopic investigation Download references The work has been financed by the Science@Tarquinia project a collaboration between the Universities of Milan and Cambridge based on a Humanities and Social Sciences International Strategy Award of the University of Cambridge Ancient genomic work was funded by the Science Foundation Ireland/ Health Research Board/Wellcome Trust Biomedical Research Partnership Investigator award no The McDonald Institute and Magdalene College We are grateful to Roger Alcàntara Fors for assistance with the preparation of the petrous bone samples We would like to thank Christophe Snoeck for sharing with us the laboratory protocol used for petrous bones at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Tessi Löffelmann for introducing and showing the protocol procedure which contributed isotopic analysis to this paper is financially supported by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG: INST 161/921-1 FUGG INST 161/923-1 FUGG and INST 161/1073-1 FUGG) Carmen Esposito was supported by the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie IF Actions (Grant HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01-101065320—TULAR) during manuscript writing and revision stages Simon Stoddart would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 290391021 – SFB 1266 for intellectual partnership with the University of Kiel during the writing of this article The University of Milan provided the archaeological research and the detailed osteological analysis Dipartimento di Beni Culturali e Ambientali LABANOF (Laboratorio di Antropologia e Odontologia Forense) Frankfurt Isotope and Element Research Center (FIERCE) Dipartimento di Storia Antropologia Religioni Arte Spettacolo Department of Classical Studies and Program in the Environment School of Earth and Environmental Sciences The authors declare no competing interests Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-61052-z Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research One of the wall paintings found in the tomb; the team plans to use multispectral analysis to uncover more of it Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a 2,500-year-old Etruscan tomb that is richly decorated with wall paintings A 2,500-year-old tomb decorated with bright-red wall paintings has been discovered at an ancient necropolis in Italy It was created by the Etruscans, a people who thrived in Italy during the middle of the first millennium B.C. but who were gradually conquered and assimilated by the Romans while another scene illustrates a metallurgical workshop director of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence and leader of the team that excavated the tomb Related: Ancient Etruscans prayed at sacred hot springs, stunning statues reveal The mural with the music and dance scene may depict the actual funeral of the deceased Scenes like this "have been interpreted by scholars as referring to the ceremonies occurring at the funeral of the members of the family," Maras said human remains and grave goods indicated that the tomb had been looted And the tomb itself is in rough shape — it sits beneath another tomb that has already collapsed Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox —Scientists solve the mystery of the Etruscans' origins —Hidden scenes in ancient Etruscan paintings revealed The tomb is located in the Tarquinia necropolis about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of Rome "Around 6,500 tombs have been identified and classified at Tarquinia and [about] 200 of them had painted decoration," Maras said The tomb was found in 2022 and was excavated and examined in detail recently and the team plans to use multispectral imaging technologies to examine the paintings and determine which colors have been lost Owen JarusSocial Links NavigationLive Science ContributorOwen Jarus is a regular contributor to Live Science who writes about archaeology and humans' past He has also written for The Independent (UK) The Canadian Press (CP) and The Associated Press (AP) Owen has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Toronto and a journalism degree from Ryerson University.  you will then be prompted to enter your display name Archaeologists discover hundreds of metal objects up to 3,400 years old on mysterious volcanic hilltop in Hungary May's full 'Flower Moon' will be a micromoon LBV Magazine English Edition a team of experts from the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the province of Viterbo and Southern Etruria discovered a chamber tomb with exceptional frescoes hidden beneath the layers of history and time one of the most important Etruscan necropolises in honor of the restorer of Etruscan funerary paintings who passed away in 2022 this burial chamber represents an invaluable testament to the art and tradition of the ancient Etruscan civilization The discovery occurred by chance when archaeologists were exploring cavities that had appeared in an agricultural field near the Monterozzi necropolis they identified a series of tombs that had already been looted in the past but with painted murals that had remained hidden for centuries Thanks to extraordinary funding from the Ministry of Culture excavation and restoration operations were carried out in strict confidentiality to prevent potential looting or accidental damage The work was directed by archaeologist Daniele F who currently leads the National Archaeological Museum of Florence had been excavated beneath an older one from the Orientalizing period The superimposition of structures created a complex archaeological situation as the collapse of the upper tomb had deposited pottery and debris inside the lower chamber the remains of red-figure ceramics found among the rubble attest to the richness of the original grave goods of the newly discovered tomb what truly makes this discovery exceptional is the state of preservation of its mural paintings where men and women whirl around a musician playing the flute the figures of a woman and two young men suggest a portrait of the deceased and their lineage the most intriguing representation is found on the right wall where a scene still under study could depict a metallurgical workshop perhaps the legendary workshop of the god Sethlans or a forge belonging to the noble family for whom the tomb was intended The restoration work is ongoing and has made it possible to recover finely detailed features in the figures Specialists Adele Cecchini and Mariangela Santella have managed to rescue the meticulousness with which the characters were depicted Daniele Maras has emphasized the importance of the discovery highlighting that this is the first tomb with figurative frescoes discovered in Tarquinia in several decades opening new avenues of research into Etruscan iconography and its stylistic evolution a protective structure is being implemented to ensure the long-term preservation of the tomb A special shelter with a thermal-cut door will maintain controlled temperature and humidity levels preserving the original pigments and allowing the tomb to be opened to the public in the future advanced multispectral imaging technologies are being applied to recover faded colors and reveal details invisible to the human eye providing valuable information about Etruscan painting techniques Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la provincia di Viterbo e per l’Etruria Meridionale Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email Archaeologists from universities in the United States and Denmark found deep within the Actun Uayazba Kab cave in Belize two small stone tools dated between 250 and 900 AD that… men and women gathered to play a game called Cuju A team of researchers has succeeded in recreating for the first time in a laboratory experiment a phenomenon that until now only existed as a theory in the realm of… the Cantonal Archaeology of Aargau carried out a rescue excavation between early May 2024 and the end of March 2025 The Egyptian archaeological mission affiliated with the Supreme Council of Antiquities announced the discovery of a group of defensive structures and a system of moats that could indicate… In the southeastern area of the city of Rome archaeologists excavating inside the Triton Baths within the monumental complex of the Villa di Sette… Why did some animals from ancient eras become fossils while others simply disappeared without a trace A recent study on the cave paintings of the Altamira Cave in Santillana del Mar Cantabria (Spain) has concluded that some of the artworks it contains could be much older… A team of paleontologists from the University of Leicester has managed to decipher one of the many enigmas of the dinosaur era—the exact moment when pterosaurs Rome achieved numerous military victories that allowed it to grow and dominate nearly the entire known world in Antiquity Receive our news and articles in your email for free You can also support us with a monthly subscription and receive exclusive content all the force of the bad weather announced yesterday by the civil protection bulletins has been concentrated on the Lazio coast the phenomena of torrential rain and strong winds have passed from the coasts of Viterbo in the stretch that passes through the Monte Riccio locality in Tarquinia At 7.30:XNUMX the banks broke and the water invaded the surrounding territory flooding the appurtenances of some houses in the area The families who live there remained blocked for a long time having to take refuge on the upper floors while the water swallowed up cars in the parking lots and invaded the rooms on the ground floor The firefighters had to intervene with river groups equipped with boats and wetsuits to reach the isolated people and make sure they did not need help At least in one case a couple of residents and their dog were rescued with the help of a helicopter moved a few hundred kilometers further south where local police officers and firefighters were busy on several fronts some flooding and some trees fallen on the road occupying the half-lane towards the center the flooding of a ditch caused the collapse of a retaining wall near some villas on Via Marche There were about ten interventions by firefighters for flooding of basements or semi-basement rooms Read also other news on Nova News Click here and receive updates on WhatsApp Follow us on the social channels of Nova News on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram The Saline di Tarquinia Nature Reserve is a hyperhaline wetland area among the few remaining in the Tyrrhenian Sea in whose extension various geological-environmental aspects are represented The area is mostly occupied by shallow water basins currently SPA (Special Protection Area) and SAC (Special Conservation Area) as it was recognized as having a high naturalistic value with environmental characteristics particularly suitable for stopping and the nesting of numerous migratory birds Seven habitats protected by the EU Habitats Directive are represented in which rare and threatened botanical species typical of environments with a high concentration of salt grow and around 220 species of birds live a treasure chest of biodiversity and geodiversity" was created during an excursion organized by ISPRA in collaboration with the Carabinieri of the Biodiversity Protection Unit of Rome On 8 February, in the occasion of the anniversary of the Ramsar Convention guided tours to discover the aquatic avifauna will be held at the Tarquinia salt pans The Convention concerns wetlands of international importance and aquatic birds Photo gallery home of the National Archaeological Museum of Tarquinia the exhibition 1437 opened its doors to the public an event celebrating the return of Filippo Lippi’s Madonna of Tarquinia a famous panel painting by the Florentine master preserved in Rome’s Palazzo Barberini to the city for which it was originally created 2025.Commissioned by Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi now finds a temporary home at the National Archaeological Museum of Tarquinia housed in the palace that bears the name of its commissioner This cultural event concludes the museum’s centennial celebrations thanks to the organization of the Archaeological Park of Cerveteri and Tarquinia (PACT) and the collaboration between the Municipality of Tarquinia Diocese Civitavecchia-Tarquinia and the Department of Cultural Heritage Enhancement of the Ministry of Culture this is the third time the panel has left Palazzo Barberini This exceptional return thus allows the rediscovery of one of the most significant works of the early Renaissance in Lazio A leading role in this operation was entrusted to Skylab Studios a company specializing in interactive visual marketing Its participation added modernity and innovation to the project as the museum experience was made even more immersive and accessible Among the initiatives realized by Skylab Studios stands out an emotional video dedicated to Palazzo Vitelleschi narrated by the voice of the Director of the Archaeological Park The video offers a special perspective that begins with an evocative shot from above and then gradually immerses itself in the ancient residence of the cardinal was also the subject of a very high-definition 3D scan This intervention made it possible to create a digital version of the work which allows visitors to observe every detail with unprecedented clarity Skylab Studios’ efforts did not stop there the company has developed a special tactile version of the Tarquinia Madonna designed to allow blind and visually impaired people to engage with the work This approach reiterates the importance of cultural heritage being accessible to all Another technological piece that enriches the exhibition is the virtual tour of Cardinal Vitelleschi’s Studiolo located on the second floor of Palazzo Vitelleschi which once housed the cardinal’s private library has been photographed in 360° high-definition to allow visitors to explore it via a touch screen The tour is enriched by interactive hotspots that reveal details and curiosities about the frescoes placed more than four meters above the ground This innovative tool makes accessible an important part of the artistic heritage that is often difficult to fully appreciate the event stands as a virtuous example of how modern technologies can enhance art and history once again confirms its excellence in the field of cultural innovation and invoked mercy this now no longer sacred place.” The inscription is inscribed on the marble of the ambo of Santa Maria in Castello once covered with various and colorful stones now a mute and bare witness to all the centuries that have passed from here on the top of an unadorned cliff that looks down on the plain of Tarquinia One can spend even half an hour there reading the memories penned by all who have entered this church And there are dates even older than that 1935 year XIII of the fascist era left by an officer who climbed in here with who knows who Going back even to the mid-nineteenth century slanted cursive typical of the writing of the time to search for the vestiges of that remote past they found themselves in front of this Romanesque monument left in abandonment already towards the end of the sixteenth century And of course they could not spare a visit.The first to notice Santa Maria in Castello was Abbot Jean Baptiste Seroux d’Agincourt He had arrived in Corneto in 1782: he was gathering material for a Histoire de l’art par les monuments that he was to publish a few years later and he had to verify the accuracy of some printed reproductions of Etruscan tombs that had been passed to him by James Byres one of the most interesting characters who frequented late 18th-century Rome he had come down to Italy when he was not even 30 years old and had decided to stay there that was extremely lucrative if you could offer your services to the young scions of the European nobility who crossed the Alps on their Grand Tour: it was impossible to travel in the Italy of the time and perhaps even to return alive to your homeland if you were not accompanied by someone who knew the places well and could direct you to replenish his already substantial income also got into the antiques market: he sold mostly antiques to grandtourists who wanted to bring home a souvenir of their experience in Italy he made himself available to anyone who needed to find objects Abbot Seroux had therefore turned to him to find the material he needed for his book to begin the checks on the Etruscan monuments agitated amazement that was difficult to restrain: before his eyes opened an intact from more than three hundred years of history those that separated Abbot Seroux’s visit from the annexation of Corneto to the Papal States Three hundred and fifty years and counting The abbot had been fascinated by the church of Santa Maria in Castello we do not know who because the name has not reached us (or has not yet been discovered) elevation and profile: at that time cameras did not exist and in order to preserve the memory of something it was necessary to work with a pencil The anonymous draughtsman who worked for Abbot Seroux left us three quick architectural drawings of the church without too many frills the earliest images of the church that have come down to us due to an earthquake: to think that already thirty years earlier the Franciscan friars who managed the complex had denounced the state in which the dome was though not particularly demanding: some repainting The collapse of the dome had also brought down the renewed interest in Santa Maria in Castello: after the earthquake it was closed and abandoned again At most there was concern about plugging the drum Something moved only after the Unification of Italy: we have news of allocations from the municipality that arrived somewhat hiccupily Then again nothing until after World War II and finally with the postwar period came also major restorations Roberto Sebastian Matta even brought one of his works into it: it was 1976 and an Autoapocalipse by the Chilean artist was being staged in Santa Maria in Castello a kind of little house made out of car scraps no one else got the itch to replicate the experiment and no more contemporary art was seen in the church From Abbot Seroux’s visit to the present day Santa Maria in Castello has not changed much there is no longer the exquisite dome that spoke in Pisan but that may not have been the one born along with the church: in all likelihood it was rebuilt between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it is established that the apse underwent some modifications The facade is guarded from view by a very tall From a distance it almost looks like a bell tower: it leads one to think that it was the project of someone who wanted to build the most disproportionate bell tower in history and then left the undertaking half-finished The bell tower is the sail-shaped one that towers over the facade sending obsessive-compulsive people who look for symmetries everywhere into a crisis This small bell gable is also a much later addition to the time when the church was built The building of Santa Maria in Castello began in the year 1121 the place where the administrative offices were located at the time because already in 1208 the church was dedicated to the Virgin a mixture of Roman and Lombard ingredients: “the first team of workers had imprinted the construction with Lombard-derived features from the sites of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan and San Michele in Pavia,” wrote scholars Ilaria Miarelli Mariani and Ilaria Sgarbozza: “the masonry apparatus in ashlars squared with meticulous precision the extensive use of reused material from the urban survivals of the late antique period a dark gray tuff typical of Tuscia.” All the decoration is due to a marble worker with an inscription running between the circles decorated with cosmatesque mosaics: a few pieces still remain in place And they are also responsible for the flooring which is partly preserved: marble inlays with tesserae of all colors and materials bring us back to the Roman culture of the 12th century Typical of the Roman culture of the 12th century is also the reuse: here coming from who knows what Roman or even Etruscan era buildings as an inscription that can be seen above a marble strip near the altar There it reads “Larth Velchas thui cesu,” meaning “Larth Velchas is buried here.” In the 12th century Etruscan sarcophagi were unceremoniously torn apart and reused as architectural elements It was the concept of circular economy in force at the time a probable inhabitant of Tarquinia two and six thousand years ago rested has thus become a step in the Christian church built at the behest of his descendants You look up: the pillars dividing the three naves of Santa Maria in Castello are tall forming the base of five large bays covered by cross vaults except for the friezes that adorn the capitals One sees there the whole repertoire of Romanesque decoration: lions Below the drum opens an unusual rose window: it is probably the work of the same Pisans who built the elliptical dome in the image and likeness of that of their cathedral which is also bare: two marble transepts on either side and what remains of the ciborium to surmount the mensa: here the graphomania of the marble workers who decorated the church prompted them to sign the ciborium as well which we therefore know to be the work of Giovanni and Guittone covered with polychrome marbles of all colors in the panels formed by the veined white marble crosses that mark the rhythm And on the other side of the church here is the ambo The pulpit must have been much more spectacular in ancient times: only a few meager fragments of its colorful decorations remain and yet has been largely offended by those who did not use too much grace on it The bulk of the ruin we imagine had to fall on the decorations in the 19th century when the third regiment of chasseurs à cheval arrived in Santa Maria in Castello following General Fally who had been sent from France to Italy in 1867 to aid Pius IX against Garibaldi during the campaign in the Roman countryside one of the least known episodes of the Risorgimento since Garibaldi’s volunteers were massacred without many courtesies by His Holiness’s army and in the end the Franco-Pontiff forces repulsed the Italians who attempted the feat of liberating Rome (they would succeed three years later with other assumptions and other organization) We do not know what exactly they did inside Santa Maria di Castello but when a French garrison camped inside a church in the nineteenth century they certainly did not do so to study the Romanesque decorations of the capitals And it was usually the church that got the worst of it inscribed above one of the church’s columns A signature like so many others inside Santa Maria in Castello but it was certainly facilitated by those who took away the pieces that decorated John di Guittone’s work geometric surface that was dealt the death blow in the 1960s when the church was robbed and parts of the pulpit were disassembled it has become a metaphor for the building that houses it: the simulacrum of what has been The idea-poor scribes who infest Instagram and the internet in general to describe buildings like Santa Maria in Castello would say that this is “a place where time seems to have stood still,” or something similar with some gimmick plucked from the barren toolbox of catchphrases unfortunately: here time has always been in a hurry and also to make it known that it had no intention of standing still And the ambo of Santa Maria in Castello is the very image of the centuries that have lashed this church The World Heritage Centre is at the forefront of the international community’s efforts to protect and preserve World Heritage partnerships for conservation Ensuring that World Heritage sites sustain their outstanding universal value is an increasingly challenging mission in today’s complex world where sites are vulnerable to the effects of uncontrolled urban development Our Partners Donate Take advantage of the search to browse through the World Heritage Centre information These two large Etruscan cemeteries reflect different types of burial practices from the 9th to the 1st century BC and bear witness to the achievements of Etruscan culture Which over nine centuries developed the earliest urban civilization in the northern Mediterranean cut in rock and topped by impressive tumuli (burial mounds) others have wall paintings of outstanding quality contains thousands of tombs organized in a city-like plan The site contains very different types of tombs: trenches cut in rock; tumuli; and some in the shape of huts or houses with a wealth of structural details These provide the only surviving evidence of Etruscan residential architecture the earliest of which date from the 7th century BC Ces deux grandes nécropoles étrusques reflètent divers types de pratiques funéraires entre le IXe et le Ier siècle avant J.C et comptent parmi les plus beaux témoignages du monde étrusque cette civilisation urbaine du nord de la Méditerranée Certaines tombes du site sont monumentales taillées dans la roche et surmontées d’impressionnants tumuli Nombre d’entre elles comportent des bas-reliefs tandis que d’autres renferment de remarquables peintures murales comprend des milliers de tombes disposées selon un plan quasi urbain Les tombes sont de divers types : tranchées creusées dans le roc ou d’autres taillées dans la roche en forme de cabane ou de maison avec un luxe de détails architecturaux Elles constituent l’unique témoignage qui nous soit parvenu de l’architecture résidentielle étrusque contient 6000 tombes creusées dans la roche Elle est célèbre pour ses 200 tombes peintes dont les plus anciennes remontent au VIIe siècle avant J.C تعكس هاتان المقبرتان الأتروريتان الكبيرتان أنواعًا متعددة من الممارسات الجنائزية بين القرن التاسع والقرن الأول ف.م وتعتبَر من أجمل الشهادات في العالم الأتروريّ، أي تلك الحضارة الحضرية في شمال المتوسط كما أن بعض قبور الموقع هائلة منحوتة في الصخر وتعلوها رُكَم مذهلة ويحتوي كثير منها على نُقيشات بينما تحوي أخرى رسومًا جدارية مذهلة فالمقبرة القريبة من "تشيرفيتيري" المعروفة بـ"بانديتاتشا" ، تحتوي على آلاف القبور المصفوفة حسب خطة شبه حضرية، مع أحياء، وشوارع وساحات صغيرة والقبور من أنواع مختلفة: خنادق محفورة في الصخر، ورُكَم، أو أخرى منحوتة في الصخر بشكل أكواخ أو بيوت مع إسهاب بالتفاصيل الهندسية وهي تشكل الشهادة الوحيدة التي وصلتنا من الهندسة المعمارية السكنية الأترورية أما مقبرة "تاركينيا" والتي تسمّى أيضًا "مونتيروتزي" فهي تحتوي على 6000 قبر محفور في الصخر وهي مشهورة بقبورها الـ 200 الرسومة والتي يعود أقدمها إلى القرن السابع ق.م 这两座巨大的伊特鲁立亚人墓葬反映了公元前9世纪至公元前1世纪不同的墓葬形式，是伊特鲁立亚文化成就的见证。它们在九个多世纪里推动了地中海北部地区最早的城市文明的发展。有些坟墓以岩石刻成，上面是给人深刻印象的墓丘。坟墓的墙壁上有很多质量精美的壁画和岩石雕刻。靠近塞尔维托里的墓地又以公墓见称，包括数千个以类似城市规划的模式安置的墓地，带有街道、小广场和邻近居所。这里有不同类型的墓葬: 岩刻沟渠和坟墓，也有一些石刻的棚屋或房舍形状的墓室，带有许多更加精致的建筑结构。这些是伊特鲁立亚人民居建筑的仅存证明。塔尔奎尼亚墓葬群一般称之为曼特罗契(Monterozzi)，包括了6000座岩石刻成的坟墓。其中200座有壁画的墓葬最著名，最早的可以追溯到公元前7世纪。 Эти два больших этрусских кладбища отражают различные способы захоронения в период IX-I вв а сверху покрыты мощными земляными насыпями – «тумули» На стенах многих гробниц нанесены различные изображения прекрасного качества Он славится своими 200 расписанными гробницами Estas dos grandes necrópolis son testigos de los distintos ritos funerarios practicados por los etruscos desde los siglos IX a I a.C y son una de los mejores testimonios de la cultura de este pueblo creador de la primera civilización urbana del norte del Mediterráneo Algunas de sus tumbas excavadas en la roca y rematadas por túmulos impresionantes Muchas de ellas están ornadas con bajorrelieves o pinturas murales de calidad excepcional situada en las cercanías de la localidad de Cerveteri posee miles de tumbas cuya disposición está organizada en función de un trazado análogo al plan urbanístico de una ciudad Las tumbas de este cementerio son de tipos muy diferentes: túmulos zanjas excavadas en la piedra y oquedades practicadas en la roca en forma de chozas o casas con gran profusión de elementos estructurales que hacen de ellas los únicos vestigios existentes de la arquitectura residencial etrusca posee 6.000 sepulcros cavados en la roca y es famosa por los 200 que están ornados con pinturas Las sepulturas más antiguas datan del siglo VII a.C The property encompasses the two necropolises of the Banditaccia and the Monterozzi the most important cemeteries of the ancient Etruscan city-states of Cerveteri and Tarquinia These two cities were built near the western coast in central Italy they have provided the majority of the most significant archaeological discoveries associated with this civilization over a period of nine centuries The two necropolises and their buffer zones cover a large area – a whole property of 326.93 ha and a buffer zone of 4,932.11 ha The 197.57 ha site dates from the 9th century BCE and contains very different types of tombs: trenches cut in rock; tumuli which often contain more than one tomb; and some Because there is little surviving written information on the Etruscans this site provides exceptional testimony of Etruscan domestic architecture from archaic times to the Hellenic period it is one of the most extensive complexes known Tarquinia is famous for its 200 painted tombs the earliest of which date from the 7th century BCE These paintings provide the only major testimony of classic artwork of pre-Roman times existing in the Mediterranean basin the Etruscan cemeteries at Cerveteri and Tarquinia offer the sole important attestation of this population that created the first urban culture in the western Mediterranean from the eighth to the first century BCE in central Italy The necropolises have been known for centuries Michelangelo visited Tarquinia during the Renaissance and a related sketch is held in Florence’s Buonarroti Archives Criterion (i): The necropolises of Tarquinia and Cerveteri are masterpieces of creative genius: Tarquinia's large-scale wall paintings are exceptional both for their formal qualities and for their content and religious beliefs of the ancient Etruscans Cerveteri exceptionally testifies in a funerary context the same town planning and architectural schemes used in an ancient city Criterion (iii): The two necropolises constitute a unique and exceptional testimony to the ancient Etruscan civilisation the only urban type of civilisation in pre-Roman Italy the depiction of daily life in the frescoed tombs many of which are replicas of Etruscan houses is a unique testimony to this vanished culture Criterion (iv): Many of the tombs of Tarquinia and Cerveteri represent types of buildings that no longer exist in any other form replicas of Etruscan town planning schemes are some of the earliest existing in the region The property and the buffer zone that encircles the necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia includes all the territory covered in ancient times by the two inhabited centres and the other numerous cemeteries surrounding them The two archaeological sites cover a vast area The property is in a good state of conservation and is continually monitored by the competent authorities of the ministry responsible for cultural heritage Several tombs at Cerveteri discovered at the beginning of the 20th century including the Tomba dei Rilievi (Tomb of the Reliefs) 'del Triclinio’ and ‘dell’Alcova’ had artefacts removed to the private collection of Marquis Campana and later to various museums in Italy and abroad (including the Louvre and the Hermitage) some of the wall paintings from Tarquinia were removed and placed in museums are situated adjacent to the sites and included within the buffer zone efforts are made to acquire these private parcels for the State Authorities are aware that the property is threatened by some illegal building within the buffer zone primarily on agricultural land at Cerveteri the impact of tourism on the fragile archaeological remains The necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia preserve our information relating to Etruscan civilization both for its town planning and for its domestic architecture The surviving topography is consistent with the design of the ancient Etruscan town sites on plateaus the authenticity of the property is confirmed by the permanency of the architectural structure of the tombs whose interior safeguards painted decorations of inestimable value the preservation of the city-like plan at Banditaccia includes the preservation of the form All conservation work has been carried out in compliance with the national Restoration Code and its stated principles including the use of local materials and craft techniques The entire Banditaccia archaeological site at Cerveteri was some time ago expropriated for public use and consequently the property is state owned and is part of the ‘cultural domain’ The Monterozzi necropolis at Tarquinia has been only partially expropriated (the Calvario area and is both state owned and privately owned 42/2004 provides appropriate safeguarding measures ensuring total control over archaeological assets managed by the ministry responsible for cultural heritage Referring both to the property and the buffer zone regional and local legislation provides further regulation with reference to the protection of landscape interest and territorial governance the entire property and the buffer zone fall within the area declared by the State as a “zone of archaeological interest” and is under the strictest rules for protection which ensure that any activity on the site must be authorized by the ministry responsible for cultural heritage Excavation must be carried out or authorized by the ministry Many interdisciplinary studies have investigated the reasons for the decay of the property and the possible pre-emptive measures The main identified threats affecting the necropolises are related to environmental factors The main risks to the painted tombs result from the opening of these sites to visitors whose presence negatively impact the thermal and humidity conditions Fire risk is also present at the necropolises Management of the property falls within the responsibility of the ministry responsible for cultural heritage that assures protection A fenced area within the property is open daily to visitors (Two parking areas have been provided at the Banditaccia site for visitors and school groups.) In order to balance conservation and tourism specific admission policy regulates the entrance of visitors to each tomb controlled glass barriers preserve tombs at Tarquinia from micro-climatic variations.) Archaeological excavation and conservation are ongoing processes on the sites The management plan of the property has five distinct action plans: Knowledge Plan as well as the coordination of management plan activities the ministry responsible for cultural heritage and Cerveteri and Tarquinia municipalities signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work jointly towards the protection and rehabilitation of the areas surrounding the necropolises Regular patrols by local wardens combat illegal building in the buffer zone The two municipalities also contribute to the Management Plan’s implementation and the improvement Both Cerveteri and Tarquinia municipalities collaborate in a cultural promotion plan that provides specific educational activities in public schools Tarquinia is a very small DOC of the Lazio wine region in central western Italy. Created in August 1996, this is one of the younger DOCs in Lazio. It covers red, white and rosato wines made from a traditional central Italian uvaggio while other permitted varieties can make up a maximum of 30 Novello wines can be made for early consumption Rosato wines are not specifically discussed in the DOC regulations However it seens that producers would use the same varieties as for the reds This complex situation helps explain why there were only 6 hectares (15 acres) of vineyards associated with the DOC in 2017 The town of Tarquinia dates back to the Etruscan era It is a designated Unesco World Heritage Site Metrics details A white deposit covering the walls in the Stanza degli Scudi of the Tomba degli Scudi which is still preserved from any kind of intervention such as cleaning and sanitization ancient Etruscans painted shields to celebrate the military power of the Velcha family Scanning electron microscopy analysis has revealed the presence of characteristic nanostructures corresponding to a calcite secondary mineral deposit called moonmilk Analysis of the microbial community identified Proteobacteria Acidobacteria and Actinobacteria as the most common phyla in strong association with the moonmilk needle fibre calcite and nanofibers of calcium carbonate Employing classical microbiological analysis we isolated from moonmilk a Streptomyces strain able to deposit gypsum and calcium carbonate on plates supporting the hypothesis of an essential contribution of microorganisms to the formation of moonmilk (a) Hand-drawn map of the tomb from Maria Cristina Tomassetti based on measurements taken during the restoration The walls of the Stanza degli Scudi are indicated with letters The red stars mark the sampling sites for microbiological analysis and the yellow stars indicate the metagenomics sampling sites A fine and uniform dry white patina is present on the wall surfaces with a gradient from the western wall towards the central atrium The eastern wall has less patina than the other walls Pictures of the white deposit in the Stanza degli Scudi Images were obtained directly from the walls with a video microscope a microorganism was present similar to that identified in March on the western wall (compare (d) The microbial community profiles of moonmilk samples were assessed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing using Illumina technology. First, DNA was extracted from samples collected from the western (indicated as W) and northern (indicated as N) walls of the Stanza degli Scudi (Fig. 1) and used as template for the library construction 12,732 filtered sequences and 299 final features were obtained using the DADA2 pipeline in QIIME2 The rarefaction curves for both samples plateaued indicating that the obtained sequencing depth was good (data not shown) The Faith’s phylogenetic diversity (a qualitative measure of community richness that incorporates phylogenetic relationships between the features) indices were 14,69 and 19,27 for the W and N samples Composition of the community in two samples of moonmilk taken from the western and northern walls of the Stanza degli Scudi revealing a delicate metabolic equilibrium between bacteria that enable the production of moonmilk in the environment Progressive calcium carbonate precipitation results in macroscopic calcitic moonmilk deposits and the plaster is composed of lime and grinded limestone (macco); and c) the preparatory layer on which the pigments are applied is composed by slaked lime and the paintings were made using the fresco technique (in this technique pigments are dispersed in water and fixed on the surface through the carbonation process: calcium hydroxide present in the plaster combines with carbon dioxide thus fixing pigments in its crystalline matrix) calcium is present in very high amounts on the walls including the temperature (16 °C) and humidity (90 to 100%) are constant bacterial species able to precipitate CaCO3 were isolated We could speculate that the very low amount of calcium present in clay promotes spherical structures of CaCO3 rather than the deposition of needle fibre calcite and nanofibres of calcium carbonate; the structure is also presumably influenced by the microbial community Our future work will involve a general assessment of the presence of moonmilk in the Monterozzi necropolis under the supervision of Soprintendenza Archeologia It will be very important to determine whether the typical physiological conditions of the tombs in the Monterozzi necropolis favour moonmilk formation and to compare these results with other studies the atrium chamber frescoes will be monitored to assess the sequence of microorganisms that re-colonize the walls in light of the microbial community composition in the Stanza degli Scudi we reported a fruitful example of the interconnection between restoration and microbiological investigation; indeed the unexpected presence of moonmilk in the burial chamber influences the decision for the next step of restoration as this calcium carbonate patina may be protective rather than damaging to the frescoes the moonmilk may be left in place while the best restoration approach is determined An automatic in situ monitoring system for measuring microenvironmental parameters (e.g. relative humidity) that was installed in the Tomba degli Scudi provided climatic data The Naive Bayes sklearn-based taxonomy classifier pre-fitted on the Greengenes 13_8 was employed with a default confidence value of 0.7 The raw sequence data was deposited in the SRA database with accession number SRP147457 Osservando le pitture della tomba degli Scudi A role for microbial selection in frescoes’ deterioration in Tomba degli Scudi in Tarquinia An updated view of the origin and etymology of moonmilk Cave minerals of the world National speleological society On the origin of fiber calcite crystals in moonmilk deposits Geomicrobiology in cave environments: past The biogenic origin of needle fibre calcite Secondary minerals in volcanic caves: data from Hawai’i Origin of abundant moonmilk deposits in a subsurface granitic environment Calcium carbonate precipitation by different bacterial strains Moonmilk deposits originate from specific bacterial communities in Altamira Cave (Spain) Biogenic evidences of moonmilk deposition in the Mawmluh cave Microbiological activities in moonmilk monitored using isothermal microcalorimetry (cave of vers chez le brandt Unravelling the enigmatic origin of calcitic nanofibres in soils and caves: purely physicochemical or biogenic processes Assessment of the potential role of Streptomyces in cave moonmilk formation Le tombe dipinte di Tarquinia: vicenda conservativa Microbial communities associated with hydromagnesite and needle-fiber aragonite deposits in a karstic cave (Altamira Actinobacteria isolated from an underground lake and moonmilk speleothem from the biggest conglomeratic karstic cave in Siberia as sources of novel biologically active compounds Taxonomic Classification of Bacterial 16S rRNA Genes Using Short Sequencing Reads: Evaluation of Effective Study Designs Molecular evidence for bacterial mediation of calcite formation in cold high-altitude caves Carbon dioxide concentration in temperate climate caves and parent soils over an altitudinal gradient and its influence on speleothem growth and fabrics Calcite moonmilk: crystal morphology and environment of formation in caves in the Italian Alps Comparative microbial community composition from secondary carbonate (moonmilk) deposits: implications for the Cansiliella servadeii cave hygropetric food web Archaeal distribution in moonmilk deposits from alpine caves and their ecophysiological potential Biogenicity and characterization of moonmilk in the grotta nera (Majella National Park The influence of human exploration on the microbial community structure and ammonia oxidizing potential of the Su Bentu limestone cave in Sardinia and Antibacterial Activity of Hard-to-Culture Actinobacteria from Cave Moonmilk Deposits A phenotypic and genotypic analysis of the antimicrobial potential of cultivable Streptomyces isolated from cave moonmilk deposits High-throughput sequencing analysis of the actinobacterial spatial diversity in moonmilk deposits Bacterial calcium carbonate precipitation in cave environments: a function of calcium homeostasis Condizioni geomorfologiche e stabilità dell’Acropoli di Tarquinia Vecchia The actinobacterial colonization of Etruscan paintings Deterioration of an Etruscan tomb by bacteria from the order Rhizobiales Microbial deterioration of cultural heritage and works of art—tilting at windmills Actinomycetes and biodeterioration in the field of fine art A microbiological survey of the Etruscan Mercareccia tomb (Italy): contribution of microorganisms to deterioration and restoration In 9th International conference on NDT of Art Discoloration Of Ancient Egyptian Mural Paintings By Streptomyces Strains And Methods Of Its Removal International Journal Of Conservation Science Characterization of Streptomyces isolates causing colour changes of mural paintings in ancient Egyptian tombs Biodeterioration of binding media in tempera paintings by Streptomyces isolated from some ancient Egyptian paintings Archivio SBAEM Tarquinia 2 giornate di scavo fascicolo Tarquinia anni 1917–1925 Importance of B4 medium in determining organomineralization potential of bacterial environmental isolates Induction of calcium carbonate by Bacillus cereus A study for monitoring and conservation in the Roman Catacombs of St The Conservation of Subterranean Cultural Heritage Takahashi, S., Tomita, J., Nishioka, K., Hisada, T. & Nishijima, M. Development of a prokaryotic universal primer for simultaneous analysis of Bacteria and Archaea using next-generation sequencing. PLoS One. 9(8), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0105592 (2014) Callahan, B. J. et al. DADA2: High-resolution sample inference from Illumina amplicon data. Nat Methods. 13(7), 581–3, https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3869 (2016) Optimizing taxonomic classification of marker gene amplicon sequences Download references The authors would like to thank the Centre of Nanotechnology Applied to The Engineering of University La Sapienza (CNIS) for their support and the SEM analysis would like to thank Nicoletta Rinaldi and prof Laura Frontali for their constant encouragement in exploring the field of bioarcheology and the restorer Adele Cecchini for sharing her deep knowledge on the Monterozzi necropolis The restoration of the Tomba degli Scudi was supported by Flavia Trucco and Alfonsina Russo Belle Arti e Paesaggio and FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) - I luoghi del cuore with the financing of Banca Intesa Angela Cirigliano and Maria Cristina Tomassetti contributed equally of Biology and Biotechnology Charles Darwin Research Center for Nanotechnology Applied to The Engineering of Sapienza (CNIS) Capo Delegazione FAI – Delegazione Viterbo Department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food Science restored the tomb and collected samples; A.C. contributed information concerning the tombs; R.N supervised and performed the nucleic acid analysis; and T.R collected samples with the restorers and wrote the paper Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34134-y Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (2022) Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Microbiology newsletter — what matters in microbiology research Etruscan Tombs and Museum in Northern Lazio Metrics details Mural paintings in the hypogeal environment of the Tomba degli Scudi in Tarquinia show a quite dramatic condition: the plaster mortar lost his cohesion and a white layer coating is spread over almost all the wall surfaces The aim of this research is to verify if the activity of microorganisms could be one of the main causes of deterioration and if the adopted countermeasures (conventional biocide treatments) are sufficient to stop it A biocide treatment of the whole environment has been carried out before the conservative intervention and the tomb has been closed for one month we sampled the microorganisms present on the frescoes and we identified four Bacillus species and one mould survived to the biocide treatment These organisms are able to produce spores which has permitted the survival despite the biocide treatment We show that these Bacillus strains are able to produce calcium carbonate and could be responsible for the white deposition that was damaging and covering the entire surface of the frescoes Our results confirm that the sanitation intervention is non always resolutive and could even be deleterious in selecting harmful microbial communities At the end of the restoration the paintings and the inscriptions of the tomb will be submitted to a critical revision by applying natural pigments dissolved in water (iron oxides for yellow and red lime for the white and black coal) directly on the wet plaster composed by calcium hydroxide and grounded macco (a organogenic limestone rich of small shells) the environmental conditions are those typical of an isolated hypogeal site with temperatures ranging from 15 °C to 17 °C and relative humidity between 95 and 100% which can lead to reach the dew-point temperature The second approach is a classical microbiological study which first identifies on plates microorganisms sampled on site and then DNA sequence is performed from pure cultures to unequivocally classify them we used the latter approach for two reasons: first when the restorers were contacted by the Soprintendenza Archeologia a preventive sanitation had already been performed with ammonium quaternary salts (Preventol) and the tomb remained sealed for one month A full metagenomic analysis at this point would have been much less informative we performed this study to support the work of restorers who were interested in understanding if microorganisms were responsible for the calcite deposition and if they survived to the sanitation treatment At this purpose it was important to show that some of the Bacillus species Before restoration of the Tomba degli Scudi a sanitation treatment was done; for technical reasons we were not able to sample microorganisms before the sanitation but the restorers were the first to enter in the tomb after one month of biocide treatment and collected the samples from the frescoes before any intervention in the tomb We conclude that the biocide treatment was effective on the majority of bacteria present in the tomb but that was ineffective on microorganisms able to produce resistant forms of life Microorganisms isolated from the walls. (a) Samples from southern and western walls were taken with two sterile swabs and (b) streaked in YPD and LB plates. (c) After colony morphology and microscopic observations, 12 pure cultures were chosen for further analysis. Bacterial morphologies of the four Bacillus species (samples 1 7 and 10) in exponential (exp) and stationary phase (sta) The pure cultures were grown in complete medium over night (exp) and three days (sta) at 28 °C Microscopic analysis shows bacteria of the Genus Bacillus In order to identify the bacterial species the 16S rDNA was amplified after extraction from pure cultures and sequenced (see Materials and Methods) (f) CaCO3 produced by a pure culture of sample 10 in YPD supplemented with urea; white arrows indicate the spores of this microorganism mixed with the CaCO3 Bacillus spores are highly resistant to environmental stresses and moreover spores of Bacillus could be deposited again on the surfaces from air We confirm that a general sanitation is useless and alters the equilibrium of the microorganism community often at the advantage of spore producing resistant strains in order to avoid the alteration of the tomb environment in association with the measures described above we suggest periodical microbiological investigation to monitor the state of the tomb and eventually periodical cycles of frescoes’ cleaning a “personalized” sanitation that targets microorganism populations specifically detected on the site and potentially harmful could be taken in consideration to remedy to previous interventions Samples were taken after the sanitation procedures Air: plates with complete medium YPD (rich medium containing 1% Bacto-peptone LB + 100 micrograms/ml ampicillin were opened for 15 minutes in the tombs and outdoor (as a qualitative control) Ground: 1gr of ground from the floor of the tomb and from outside were put in 1 ml of sterile water and 100 microliters were plated in LB medium Frescoes: with sterile cotton swabs two samples from the southern and western walls were taken and streaked in sterile conditions on YPD and LB plates The production of calcium carbonate was followed on YPD plates containing 3 gr/l of Urea and LB plates containing 25 g/l of CaCl2 The online resource http://www.phylogeny.fr/simple_phylogeny.cgi was used to construct the filogenetic tree Contributo epigrafico per l’esegesi dei soggetti biomineralization processes and biocleaning applications of Roman Catacombs-living bacteria Download references The authors would like to thank the Center of Nanotechnology Applied to The Engineering of University La Sapienza (CNIS) for their support and the SEM analysis would like to thank Nicoletta Rinaldi for sharing the passion and the secret of restoration Laura Frontali for constant support in exploring new field of biology and biotechnology Maria Cristina Tomassetti and Angela Cirigliano contributed equally to this work Departement of Biology and Biotechnology “Charles Darwin” restored the Tombs and collected samples; A.C. contributed information concerning the tombs; T.R The authors declare that they have no competing interests Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06169-0 Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2024) Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Microbiology newsletter — what matters in microbiology research, free to your inbox weekly. Lawrence was still young but dying of tuberculosis While in self-imposed exile from his native England which had banned Lady Chatterley’s Lover he took a tour of the mysterious painted Etruscan tombs in the town of Tarquinia on Italy’s central west coast Scrawled with images from an ancient world in scarlet gold and green — and depicting lithe men and women dancing playing music and having sex — these burial chambers provoked Lawrence into writing his final and perhaps most heartfelt travelogue the posthumously published Etruscan Places and one of England’s greatest and most controversial writers had spent 10 years searching for a place and a race that would embody what literary critics later called his “phallism,” a romantic philosophy that involved thinking with the loins “The curves of their limbs show pure pleasure in life,” he wrote sitting on a grassy mound above one of the tombs in Tarquinia in 1927 “It is as if the current of some strong different life swept through them different from our shallow current today: as if they drew their vitality from different depths that we are denied.” (See 10 things to do in Rome.) the tombs were accessible to anyone who wanted to descend into them Their treasures had been plundered over the centuries given by the medieval Tarquinians as tax to the Vatican Some of the bronze and gold hoards they held found their way to museums in Rome and around Europe malaria-ridden medieval ruin of a town of almost 8,000 souls into a tourist destination on the seashore an hour from Rome Beginning in the late 1950s (a decade when censors finally relented on Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the U.K archaeologists began discovering hundreds of tombs under the hilltop where Lawrence visited only five Tourists today can visit the same tombs — they number at least 2,000 — but only stand at the doorways and view the walls through a pane of glass installed to protect the paintings from further decay The dancing figures that so transported Lawrence are still visible They seem surprisingly gay for people in funeral mode the sexy death celebrations of the Etruscans are baffling To these ancient Mediterranean people — probably a mixed race from the Middle East and Italy who carried with them a mélange of belief systems from Egypt Babylon and Greece — death was very much a part of life The death of prominent individuals was marked by Dionysian rituals of drunkenness and sex led by shamans who augured the future from the flight patterns of birds and the patterns of blood flowing from the still-quivering livers of sacrificed sheep (See pictures of disputed antiquities.) The ancient Romans completed their slow conquest of the Etruscans around the 3rd century B.C. but retaining their religion — save for the orgiastic death banquets which were so wild that even the licentious Romans eventually banned them in which dehumanizing morality and rationality crushed nature “Only a few are initiated into the mysteries of the bath of life and the bath of death,” he rhapsodized leaving among his body of work a sex-drenched tome that would become one of the key texts of 20th century bohemianism Tarquinia’s vivid tomb paintings meanwhile still attract tourists and lovers who linger late on dark staircases gazing at timeless meadows where shepherds trail their flocks the sun leaves strips of red in the indigo above Homer’s wine-dark sea See 50 essential travel tips. See Time.com/Travel for city guides, stories and advice. Contact us at letters@time.com the restoration of the Tomb of the Painted Vases an important Etruscan burial site discovered in 1869 in a plot of land near the city has been completed: it is one of the most important Etruscan tombs and features frescoed walls with scenes of banquets and dances and also a unique table with two vases on it The restoration was presented Saturday by the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti Paesaggio for the Metropolitan Area of Rome the Province of Viterbo and Southern Etruria: supervised by Franco Adamo and financed by the Ny Carlsberg Foundation through the Academy of Denmark it has made it possible to return to everyone an important cultural heritage to make visitable also for the general public.The tomb has been fully recovered after the ravages of time and especially a devastating intervention by “grave robbers” in August 1963 had removed large parts of the painted walls by means of a chainsaw The restoration also yielded the wonderful surprise of a new painted figure previously unknown because it was covered by a limestone encrustation but now returned to light in all its fine detail The team of restorers to whom the work is owed also includes Adele Cecchini and Mariangela Santella it will be necessary to equip it with a glass door with thermal break and secure its access route from the edge of the bank above after saving an archaeological masterpiece from certain ruin protection can be combined with public enjoyment which is always its ultimate goal as established by law The presentation took place at the end of the Days in Remembrance of Maria Cataldi Tarquinia’s late well-deserving archaeologist which were held between Rome and Tarquinia from October 14 to 16 And precisely on the final day of Saturday 16 ample space was given to the restoration of the Tomb of the Painted Vases and then opened the restored hypogeum in the afternoon to a select group of academics and institutions thanks to the hospitality of the Quattro Grani farm president of the Association of Friends of the Painted Tombs of Tarquinia Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni and Matilde Marzullo director of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum of the Vatican Etruscologists Gilda Bartoloni and Stephan Steingräber welcomed by Superintendent Margherita Eichberg and archaeological officer Daniele F with Annette Rathje of the Academy of Denmark and restorers Adele Cecchini and Franco Adamo Pictured: the Tomb of the Painted Vases after restoration Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and elsewhere have sequenced and analyzed the genomes of 82 individuals that lived between 800 BCE and 1000 CE in Etruria and southern Italy Etruscan dancers and musicians in the Tomb of the Leopards in Tarquinia The Etruscan civilization occupied a large area of central Italy during the Iron Age including the modern-day regions of Tuscany Given the peculiarities distinguishing the Etruscan culture from its contemporary neighbors the geographical origins of populations associated with the Etruscan civilization have long been a topic of intense debate as far back as ancient times with two main competing hypotheses The first proposes an Anatolian-Aegean origin as indicated by the ancient Greek writers Herodotus and Hellanicus of Lesbos This hypothesis is supported by the presence of Ancient Greek cultural elements in Etruria during the so-called Orientalizing period The second advocates for an autochthonous development as described in the 1st century BCE by the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus the Etruscan population originated locally from people associated with the Bronze Age Villanovan culture around 900 BCE “While the current consensus among archeologists favors the latter hypothesis the persistence of a probable non-Indo-European language isolate surrounded by Italic Indo-European-speaking groups is an intriguing and still unexplained phenomenon that requires further archeological and genetic investigations,” said study’s senior author Dr director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology the authors extracted and analyzed DNA from a set of 82 individuals that were grouped on the basis of their radiocarbon dates and genetic affinities into three time intervals: 48 individuals from 800 to 1 BCE (Iron Age and Roman Republic) 6 individuals from 1 to 500 CE (Imperial period) and 28 individuals from 500 to 1000 CE (12 from central Italy and 16 from southern Italy) (i) individuals associated with the Etruscan culture carried a high proportion of steppe-related ancestry despite speaking a non-Indo-European language; if the Etruscan language was indeed a relict language that predated Bronze Age expansions then it would represent one of the rare examples of language continuity despite extensive genetic discontinuity; the steppe-related ancestry in Etruscans may have been mediated by Bronze Age Italic speakers possibly through a prolonged admixture process resulting in a partial language shift; the Etruscan-related gene pool remained generally homogeneous for almost 800 years notwithstanding the sporadic presence of individuals of likely Near Eastern (iii) eastern Mediterranean ancestries replaced a large portion of the Etruscan-related genetic profile during the Roman Imperial period; (iv) a substantial genetic input from northern European ancestries was introduced during the Early Middle Ages possibly through the spread of Germanic tribes into the Italian peninsula; (v) the genetic makeup of present-day populations from central and southern Italy was mostly in place by the end of the 1st millennium CE “Considering that steppe-related groups were likely responsible for the spread of Indo-European languages now spoken around the world by billions of people the persistence of a non-Indo-European Etruscan language is an intriguing and still unexplained phenomenon that will require further archaeological linguistic and genetic investigation,” the researchers said challenges simple assumptions that genes equal languages and suggests a more complex scenario that may have involved the assimilation of early Italic speakers by the Etruscan speech community possibly during a prolonged period of admixture over the 2nd millennium BCE,” added University of Florence’s Professor David Caramelli Although more ancient DNA from across Italy is needed to support the team’s conclusions ancestry shifts in Tuscany and northern Lazio similar to those reported for the city of Rome and its surroundings suggests that historical events during the 1st millennium CE had a major impact on the genetic transformations over much of the Italian peninsula “The Roman Empire appears to have left a long-lasting contribution to the genetic profile of southern Europeans bridging the gap between European and eastern Mediterranean populations on the genetic map of western Eurasia,” said first author Professor Cosimo Posth a researcher in the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen The findings were published in the journal Science Advances The origin and legacy of the Etruscans through a 2000-year archeogenomic time transect Science Advances 7 (39); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abi7673 which contains wall paintings that represent one of the greatest masterpieces of Etruscan art has been reborn thanks to a restoration project launched in 2016 and conducted by Maria Cristina Tomassetti and Chiara Arrighi under the supervision of the Superintendency which has made it possible to save the still-existing pictorial apparatus of the tomb’s central chamber and to bring to light figures inscriptions and details never seen before The tomb was made accessible to the public during the restoration work thanks to some extraordinary guided tours by the FAI Delegation of Viterbo to show visitors the stages of recovery and the techniques used.The restoration was presented in Tarquinia on the morning of Saturday 2018 by Vice Mayor Martina Tosoni and in the presence of Margherita Eichberg Fine Arts and Landscape for the metropolitan area of Rome.“Tarquinia plays an important role in the history of archaeology,” Eichberg said “Enhancing an all-decorated tomb that opens the door to a world far back in time is something extraordinary Our next intervention will be to create a gallery that allows people to visit the tomb in its entirety and appreciate in the interior the painted walls.” The Tomb of the Shields dates back to the fourth century B.C and is located in the Etruscan Necropolis of Monterozzi in Tarquinia(VT) a site named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 along with the Necropolis of Cerveteri which celebrates the virtues of the Velcha was voted by 5.681 people during the seventh edition of "I Luoghi del Cuore," the census of Italian places not to forget promoted by FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo detail of one of the wall paintings of the Tomb of the Shields in Tarquinia chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate temporary administrator of the Moscow Patriarchate parishes in Italy presided over the great consecration of the Church of the Holy Transfiguration and St Anthony the Great in the city of Tarquinia The historical building of the former 13th century Catholic church has been transferred to the Administration of the Moscow Patriarchate Parishes in Italy back then an archimandrite serving as the Administration secretary took a personal care in founding in Tarqunia a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church restoration work was carried out with time and liturgical vessels were purchased Metropolitan Anthony’s concelebrants in the rite of consecration and the Divine Liturgy were Archpriest Vyacheslav Bachin Nicholas Metochion in Bari; Hieromonk Ambrose (Matsegora) secretary of the Administration of the Moscow Patriarchate Parishes in Italy; Hieromonk Avel (Usachev) rector of the Church of the Transfiguration the archpastor also consecrated new corporals for Italian parishes According to the Decree of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia Hieromonk Avel was rewarded at the Lesser Entrance with the right to wear a decorated pectoral cross Metropolitan Anthony addressed himself to the worshippers with an archpastoral admonition On behalf of the concelebrants and numerous parishioners the hierarch was greeted by Hieromonk Avel who pointed to the hierarch’s personal participation in the life of the newly consecrated church Metropolitan Anthony was presented with an old engraving depicting St The archpastor’s fellowship with the clergy and the flock continued at a festive tea party DECR Communication Service/Patriarchia.ru located in the old italian city of tarquinia, laboratorio di architettura e design (LAD) has completed a small pool in the garden of a private villa the intervention is designed to be ‘a machine for observing the landscape’ with two stone walls channeling views like an optical device comprising three distinct elements — the landscape the pool and the deck — the shape and proportions of the project are reminiscent of ‘fontanile’ vernacular structures built to hold natural spring water the project intends to create a space that exists in harmony with the environment allowing its users to contemplate the beauty of the surrounding landscape italyvideo courtesy of laboratorio di architettura e design the shape of the pool is reminiscent of vernacular structures built to hold natural spring water the intervention is designed to be a machine for observing the landscape two stone walls channel views across the rural lazian landscape the project intends to create a space that exists in harmony with nature name: fontanile pooltype: private poollocation: tarquinia italydesign: 2014completed: 2015client: privatedesigner: matteo bianchi AXOR presents three bathroom concepts that are not merely places of function but destinations in themselves — sanctuaries of style Early testing suggests the tombs and their occupants date back to the second through fourth centuries AD This cemetery was undoubtedly reserved for wealthy and powerful Roman elites The well-preserved skeletons were dressed in gold jewelry and fancy leather footwear and their tombs appear to have been designed to resemble the architecture of their earthly homes (smaller in scale) “We found several skeletons still wearing their expensive stockings and shoes,” lead excavation archaeologist Emanuele Giannini who works for the private archaeological firm Eos Arc and the fact that the bones show no sign of stress or physical labor [leads us to believe] these weren’t local farmers but upper-crust members of Roman families coming from cities.” Although the region is known for such finds which took place on a 52-acre plot of land near the ancient city of Tarquinia They simply had no idea that a cemetery reserved for aristocrats would have been located where it was given the lack of any historical reference The collection of luxurious goods buried with the deceased individuals was extremely impressive Among the highlights were silver rings with amber and engraved initials and even some still-preserved items of clothing Archaeologists believe that the occupants wanted to recreate heavenly spaces similar to their earthly homes based on the diversity of funerary objects found near the remains and the luxurious designs and linings inside the tombs Many tombs used to have elaborate cloth linings or were surrounded and covered by tiles or terracotta pieces that looked like little houses The skeletal remains were found very close to the surface of the earth buried at a depth of approximately 20 inches (50 cm) Most of the discovered graves were communal graves probably built for at least two people who shared the same family connection Several skeletons were also found wrapped together The site’s unique state of preservation has been attributed to the fact that “huge limestone blocks that stick out of the ground (made) plowing and modern farming impossible in the area,” said Giannini “It has remained untouched (for) centuries.” Authorities are certain more hidden wonders will come to light as digs for the solar park move to another nearby site The area where the necropolis has been discovered will not form part of the solar park and will be cordoned off for safety reasons | Text SMS to 8100 with content PLReceive 4 mesages x 25 cup © 2016-2021 Prensa Latina Latin American News Agency Radio – Publications  – Videos – News by the minute.All Rigts Reserved Web Site developed by IT Division  Prensa Latina he graduated in literature with a classical focus in 1991 from the University “Federico II” of Naples and at the same university he obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Archaeology at the University “La Sapienza” of Rome He began working immediately after his doctorate carrying out research activities for the Institute for Etruscan-Italic Archaeology in Rome (later to become the Institute for Studies on Italic Civilizations and the Ancient Mediterranean) of the CNR a position he has never abandoned since: in fact Bellelli has taught at several universities: he has been an adjunct professor of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities at the School of Specialization in Archaeology of the University “Federico II” of Naples at the University of Palermo and at the University of Naples “L’Orientale.” For Bellelli also an experience as editor in chief of the scientific journal Mediterranea Annual Notebooks of the Institute for Ancient Mediterranean Studies He is also a corresponding member of the National Institute of Etruscan and Italic Studies in Florence Bellelli is very knowledgeable about the area in addition to being one of the best working Etruscologists also in charge of the CNR archaeological excavations in the urban area of Cerveteri In the city there is much satisfaction with the appointment: “We have worked for almost ten years to obtain the establishment of the Archaeological Park an achievement that was not at all taken for granted and indeed many told us was impossible,” said Cerveteri Mayor Alessio Pascucci with the appointment of Bellelli as the first director and with the choice of a person of such great depth and quality as really opens a new chapter in the history of our cities The choice of Vincenzo Bellelli is [...] in the groove of professionalism merit and investment in the future.” "},"children":[]}]},{"name":"paragraph","children":[{"name":"text","attributes":{"value":" Archaeologists at the necropolis in Tarquinia said that they believed the “Queen’s Tomb” suggesting a network of Etruscan links with other civilisations "},"children":[]}]},{"name":"paragraph","children":[{"name":"text","attributes":{"value":" The dig uncovered an imposing open-air staircase leading down to the tomb entrance The walls inside are covered in a form of plaster common at the time in Cyprus Egypt and Syria but not previously found in what was Etruria There are also traces of painted decorations using techniques similar to those in Greece "},"children":[]}]},{"name":"paragraph","children":[{"name":"text","attributes":{"value":" The"},"children":[]},{"name":"paywall","children":[{"name":"text","attributes":{"value":" tombs at the Tarquinia necropolis have been on Unesco’s World Heritage List since 2004 The Etruscans and their culture were systematically wiped out by the Romans with the result that most of what is known about them derives from their burial sites "},"children":[]}]}]}]},"summary({\"maxCharCount\":200})":{"type":"json","json":[{"name":"paragraph","children":[{"name":"text","attributes":{"value":" Work has begun to excavate what is believed to be a royal Etruscan tomb dating to the mid-7th century BC The Times Work has begun to excavate what is believed to be a royal Etruscan tomb dating to the mid-7th century BC Archaeologists at the necropolis in Tarquinia said that they believed the “Queen’s Tomb” The dig uncovered an imposing open-air staircase leading down to the tomb entrance The tombs at the Tarquinia necropolis have been on Unesco’s World Heritage List since 2004