Villa Giulia was built in the mid-16th century by Vignola as a pleasure palace for Pope Julius III, who used to float up the Tiber on a flower-decked barge to the building site to keep an eye on progress. It is now a museum devoted to the Etruscans, whose upper classes at least shared Julius’s love of luxury. Occupying the area bounded by the Arno and Tiber, they dominated Rome until ousted by an uprising in 509 BCE.
Piazzale di Villa Giulia 9 • 06 320 1706 • www.villagiulia.beniculturali.it • Open 9am–8pm Tue–Sun • Adm $9; free for under 18 and over 65; free for all first Sun of the month
This is a lovely museum with a lot to see and pleasant gardens to stroll around when you need to take a break. There are two main floors, plus a small basement section—an atmospheric home for the reconstructed tombs from Etruscan necropolises at Tarquinia and Cerveteri. The ground floor is organized geographically, with sections devoted to the main Etruscan archaeological sites, including Cerveteri, Vulci, and Veio. The first floor has a room devoted to important objects that have been returned after being illegally excavated and sold, as well as private collections that have been donated to the museum. There is also an interesting and well-explained epigraphic section.
A reconstruction of a tomb at the Etruscan necropolis at Tarquinia, this is frescoed with scenes from a banquet, with dancers, acrobats, and athletes providing entertainment.
This vase, used for carrying water, was imported from Greece by the Etruscans and shows a lion and panther attacking a mule.
This marvellous 6th-century BCE terra-cotta sarcophagus, with four roaring lions on its lid, was so huge that it had to be cut in two in order to fit in the kiln for firing.
A cylindrical bronze coffer in which women stored mirrors, cosmetics, and beauty accessories, incised with intricately detailed scenes from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts.
This exquisite red-figured Greek krater—used for mixing wine and water—holds 12 gallons and depicts a scene from the Trojan War, in which the Olympian deity Hermes directs Hypnos, the god of sleep, and Thanatos, the god of death, to carry away the body of a slain warrior. It was sold to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art after being looted from a tomb in the 1920s, and was returned to Italy in 2008.
As with similar practices in contemporary Catholicism, models of body parts, including faces, feet, uteri, and various other internal organs were offered to Etruscan gods by sick people and their families, in the hope that they would be cured.
When it was discovered in 1881, this splendid 6th-century BCE sarcophagus was in 400 pieces. Painstakingly reconstructed, the intimate portrait of a married couple reclining on the lid, smiling as if sharing a joke, is perhaps the most evocative and human work of Etruscan art in existence.
In the gardens is a 19thcentury reconstruction of the Temple of Alatri.
Imported from Corinth, Greece, this vase is painted with hunting and battle scenes, including a fascinating frieze showing hoplites (foot soldiers) in formation with decorated shields.
The Faliscans, who lived in southern Lazio, were an indigenous Italic tribe with their own language and culture. This elaborate 4th-century BCE vase is decorated with scenes showing a personification of Dawn rising in a chariot.
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