What to see · Cerveteri

More places of interest

• Necropoli di Monte Abatone

  The necropolis of Monte Abatone is an Etruscan burial ground that belonged to the ancient city of Caere: it lies on a tuff height south-east of Cerveteri. It has been investigated since the nineteenth century, and then with excavation campaigns in 1944, between 1956 and 1961 by the Fondazione Lerici of Milan, in 2000 and from 2018 to 2021.

  What to see

  The Fondazione Lerici excavations identified 641 tombs, all already plundered by tomb robbers: a little over thirty are of archaic type, that is, semi-built, all the others chamber tombs. The most interesting, for their original plans, are those of the seventh century BC, among them the Torlonia Tomb and the Campana Tumulus, the only one that in size bears comparison with the tumuli of the Banditaccia necropolis.

  The excavations of 2000 recovered more than a hundred tombs of the fourth and third centuries BC, similar in structure to those of the Banditaccia.

  Visiting

  Whether and how the area can be visited should be checked with the town of Cerveteri.

  Our editors' tip

  The necropolis has not finished yielding things. The latest excavation campaign brought to light tombs from a period between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, and inside were objects that had come from different places around the Mediterranean.

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