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| Notice the mounds, under those are the underground tombs. |
The train station was small and instantly, we knew we were in a small city, thankful we bought the return tickets home at the same time as the ones to get there. We were lucky to catch the bus waiting all of two minutes from the moment we got off the train, which happened to arrive 52 minutes later than normal due to unknown circumstances. If we had missed that bus, according to their schedule, we would have had to wait another 40 minutes for the next one to come around. After all, Sundays are generally reduced transit days in Italy. So by everything working out with the quick timing, we knew things were beginning to go our way.
Ten minutes later, we arrived at the bus stop for Tarquinia. We walked up the main street and it felt like a town from the wild west. All the stores were shut up, no people were in sight. I'm surprised tumbleweed didn't blow past us. My initial thoughts were, Wow, this must be a great wine festival if the whole town closed to go to it. But then we arrived at the center of the small town where the festival was held. All the booths were vacated.
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| Ghost Town |
We figured we should go get some food at that point, curious when the event was going to start and after finding only two restaurants open, we got a bad feeling in our guts that things just wouldn't go our way that day. Near the place, we saw a poster for the advertised wine festival. How lovely! It starts at 8:00pm every night, five hours away. Could we really wait that long when nothing was open?
As a tip for tourists, in these small cities around Rome, there are festivals often. Back in November, I wanted to attend an olive oil festival in some city outside of Rome, but I faced the same issue. The problem was, they seem to cater to people who live in the town or have a car, because there are usually no trains or buses, or very few for that matter, which leave the city after 8:30pm. Relying on public transportation has its limitations, and this past Sunday, we felt them.
The answer was no, we really could not wait that long when nothing was open. We wanted to be able to catch a train home.
The pasta lunch was just ok, although the secondo plate of the day, swordfish carpaccio, was refreshing and delicious. After, we braved the hot weather and walked to the tombs, easy to find on foot in such a small city. At the necropolis, at least, the day got better, because it is nice to be around history so ancient. The Etruscans, a PRE-Roman culture, mind you, are from around 700 BC.
But they left some fantastic pieces of art, including paintings, ceramics, tools and tombs dug into the hillside. The necropolis of the Etruscans in Tarquinia starts in the hills and goes what looks a few miles down to the sea, one of the largest "cemeteries" I have ever seen.
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| Terra cotta roofing covers the stairways made so visitors can see the tombs underground. |
To see the art and tools of the culture, Villa Giulia in northern Rome has a great Etruscan Museum. Once upon a time I blogged about the villa here, and I'd like to note the post I linked was not one of my finer writing styles after just reading it again. But hey, experimentation can be fun. The museum part of it is very interesting to see what ancient humans used without modern advancement. But for their tombs, which are equally interesting, and for a nice train trip outside of Rome along the beach of the Tyrrhenian Sea, it's worth going to Tarquinia.
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| Historians wish they could go in the rooms and not just view through glass doors. |
Just don't go there on a Sunday.
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