Volterra

Our first day trip was to the nearby town of Volterra (pop. about 10,000). Like many historic towns in Tuscany, it is perched on a steep hilltop high above the valley floor. There were settlements here during the Stone Age. The town reached its peak of prosperity and influence in the 12th century, after which it got gobbled up by the rulers of Florence. Today, it is best known for the fact that it was an important Etruscan community from the 5th-3rd century B.C., when it was incorporated into the ancient Roman Republic.

Today, it is famous for the many craftsmen who work in alabaster, a soft, easily sculpted stone that is found in the area. It also has a famous museum of Etruscan art, the subject of a future blog entry.

Outside of town, there is an Etruscan necropolis, a "city of the dead." It took a bit of fancy driving and some trial-and-error navigation, but we finally found a pathway to some of the tombs. Jan and I went down underground to explore. The burial chambers were at the foot of a steep stairway. There was a circular central room from which four smaller side chambers radiated. These smaller rooms had stone "beds" for the deceased. The whole complex had been cut out of solid "tufa," a soft stone formed from the compression of volcanic ash. It's the same kind of stone from which the Indians carved their cave dwellings back in Bandelier Canyon, New Mexico.
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