On the 23rd of August 2011 the National Etruscan Museum exhibition, called “+110 “ started the celebration of its glorious past. It is going to last up to October the 9th 2011. On the occasion Etruscan archeological finds have come out from the warehouses, together with architecture plans, invitations, signatures of the visitors. Never seen findings are on show, often accompanied by nineteenth century drawings by skilled authors from the German Archeological Institute in Rome, who in 1871 reproduced the objects of the museum and of the newly opened tombs.
In a way it is a sort of an ideal voyage into the museum history . At the beginning of the nineteenth century the professional diggers, the so-called scavini, noble ancestors of the contemporary grave robbers, in accordance with the local landowners unearthed the Etruscan treasures for the antiques international trade. Later, from the business a new historical awareness developed , giving way to private collections and gradually to the idea of a museum. In 1901 a new neoclassical building designed by Giuseppe Partini opened, near the medieval cathedral. It actually represented a special exception in Tuscany where most museums were adaptations from former palaces, cathedrals or even military barracks.
Beautiful Attic vases, rich in figured scenes, fragments of frescoes and Bucchero wares are here shown as witnesses of a great past.
Chiusi was, between the 7th and the 5th centuries B.C, the most important centre of the Etruscan civilization, of the dodecapoli , that is of the league of 12 towns, under the reign of the mythical king Porsenna. According to the Roman hystorian Pliny The Elder he was buried in an
underground labyrinth. The medieval legend speaks about his fabulous sarcophagus, inside a golden carriage with 12 horses, guarded by a golden brooding hen and its 5,000 chicks. Actually what is now known as Porsenna’s labirinth is a network of underground passages, forming the draining water system connected with external wells. The visitors can get through the Cathedral Museum into a mysterious place back to the roots of Tuscany, which was later absorbed by the Roman civilization .The ancient Etruscan vitality is still perceived today in multiple forms. The contemporary inhabitants of the area have surely inherited from the past the typical Tuscan witticism, the creativity in its multiple declinations among which the varied local cooking, made of olive oil ,barley, venison. .We might even say that the Etruscan flavors still survive here.
A journey into a place proud of its historical past.
The right place for a holiday.
Tuscany Holiday Rent offers plenty of accommodations, one in particular, a B&B with a swimming pool, the quiet place where to relax and, at the same time, to start a personal discovery of the Etruscan surroundings
