The patron saint of Cerveteri is Saint Michael the Archangel, celebrated on 8 May in the church dedicated to him, built in 1756, as well as in a town oratory named after him.
The modern town stands on the tufa plateau of ancient Caere, one of the most important Etruscan cities, and preserves in the Banditaccia necropolis one of the most extraordinary Etruscan funerary complexes, for the beauty and size of its tombs and the importance of its finds: here the famous Sarcophagus of the Spouses was discovered, now kept at the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome. The site's archaeological rediscovery, begun in the 1830s with the first excavations and continued throughout the 20th century, led in 2004 to the Banditaccia necropolis being inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Via degli Inferi, a road deeply cut into the tufa by the walls of ancient Caere, connected the city of the living with that of the dead.
