Our ship docked at Civitavecchia, the closest port to Rome. Many on our ship took day trips into Rome but we decided to have a more relaxing adventure and took a bus north to Tarquinia.
Tarquinia was an early Etruscan city. It was a trading power as early as the 8th century BC and reached it’s peak in the 4th century BC. By the early Middle Ages the ancient city had shrunk to a small fortified settlement on the “Castellina”, a high hill.
Our first stop was the Tarquinia National Museum. There are wonderful views from this building as well as from the town walls. This is looking west toward the sea.
This museum is filled with Etruscan artifacts recovered from nearby archeological sites.
These stone burial coffins are pretty impressive.
The museum is in a beautiful Renaissance palace that was built in the mid 1400s. They were doing some renovating or repair in the courtyard.
This was a burial chamber that was moved and reassembled in the museum.
There are cases and cases of Grecian urns .
Our favorite part of the visit was wandering through the old walled town . We had it almost to ourselves!
Views from the city walls……again, to the west and the sea.
And to the north.
We peeked in at this gate and were invited in. An artist lives here and we were able to view some of his sculptures. It turns out that Tarquinia is an artists community. I could not bring myself to take pictures of his work since we weren’t buying anything. It was pretty pricey.
A view to the east.
The modern town lies to the south.
The weather was lovely and we thoroughly enjoyed our day in Tarquinia.
Gracia's Travels - a photo-blog 
thanks once again Gracia for sharing your tour through beautiful artifacts and such workmanship in the stone. The works of art and the lifestyle of the people continue to amaze me.