Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Past the entrance to the Egyptian Museum a grand staircase, the Simonetti Stairs, leads up to the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco , which holds sculpture, funerary art and applied art from the sites of southern Etruria - a good complement to Rome’s specialist Etruscan collection in the Villa Giulia. Especially worth seeing are the finds from the Regolini-Galassi tomb, from the seventh century BC, discovered near Cerveteri, which contained the remains of three Etruscan nobles, two men and a woman; the breastplate of the woman and her huge fibia (clasp) are of gold. Take a look at the small ducks and lions with which they are decorated, fashioned in the almost microscopic beadwork for which Etruscan goldsmiths were famous. There’s also armour, a bronze bedstead, a funeral chariot and a wagon, as well as a great number of enormous storage jars, in which food, oil and wine were contained for use in the afterlife. Beyond here are Etruscan bronzes, including weapons, candelabra, barbecue sets (skewers and braziers); beautiful women’s makeup cases known as cistae, and, most notably, the so-called Mars of Todi, a three-quarters lifesize votive statue found in the Umbrian town of Todi. On a flap of the figure’s breastplate an inscription gives the study of the donor. Further on, there is a large collection of Etruscan sarcophagi and stone statuary from Vulci, Tarquinia and Tuscania in northern Lazio. Particularly interesting here are the finely carved horses’ heads from Vulci and the sarcophagus of a magistrate from Tarquinia which still bears traces of the paint its reliefs were coloured with. There are also two rooms of Etruscan jewellery, with exquisite goldsmith work, crowns of golden oak and laurel leaves, necklaces, earrings and rings set with semiprecious stones and a fibula complete with the owner’s study etched on it in such small writing that a magnifying glass is provided for you to read it.

If you haven’t had your fill of the Etruscans by now, go back downstairs to see another huge collection, housed in a series of large rooms on the north side of the Belvedere Palace which offer stunning views of Monte Mario, and comprising lots of vases, assorted weapons and items of everyday household use, and a magnificent terracotta statue of Adonis melodramatically lying on a webbed couch, found near the town of Tuscania in the 1950s. Finally, don’t miss the Greek krater, among a lot of Greek pottery found in Etruscan tombs, which shows Menelaus and Odysseus asking the Trojans for the return of Helen. It’s housed in a special display case and can be rotated by pressing the electrical switch on the bottom of the case