Museum visits · Tarquinia · Italy
The painted tombs of Tarquinia
you go down a steep little stair, you look through a pane of glass, and behind it is a banquet from two and a half thousand years ago
On the Monterozzi hill there are six thousand tombs cut into the rock, and a couple of hundred of them have painted walls: it is the largest body of pre-Roman painting in the Mediterranean, and for a good part of the centuries it was the only thing we knew about how the Etruscans saw themselves. The visit is like no other. The meadow on the top of the hill is dotted with little concrete huts; you open a door, you go down a steep stair into the damp, and at the bottom there is a pane of glass. Behind the glass, lit, there is a painted room: people reclining at a banquet, dancers, players of the double flute, someone fishing from a boat with the birds about him. Then you come back up, you shut the door, and you go on to the next hut.
Getting there
The necropolis is outside the town and the museum inside it: they are two different stops, a kilometre and a half from one another.
- From Montalto di Castro you go south down the Aurelia: the necropolis is on the road, before the town, and it is not a detour
- The entrance to the necropolis, with the ticket office, is at 42.250003, 11.767822
- The national archaeological museum is in palazzo Vitelleschi, in the historic centre, at 42.253843, 11.755757
- You leave the vehicle in a dirt yard at 42.249294, 11.768543, which is ninety metres from the entrance: that is the right place to stop, and there is no need to look for another
- Going into the centre with the motorhome is not worth it: the museum is in palazzo Vitelleschi, 1.2 kilometres from the yard, inside the historic centre. Either you walk, a quarter of an hour slightly uphill, or you move the vehicle to a parking place in the town: it is not a stroll from the ticket office
Practical information
Duration two good hours for the necropolis, walking from one hut to the next, and another hour and a half for the museum. Together they make a full half day, and with the museum you get to a whole one.
Price 13 euros for the site ticket, museum and necropolis, 2 reduced
When to go all year, closed on Mondays
Suitable for anyone who feels up to going down. Every tomb is a steep, narrow and often damp little stair, and to see anything you make dozens of descents and climbs. With bad knees or claustrophobia you see a great deal less, and the museum becomes the main part.
Booking not needed, the ticket is bought at the ticket office of the necropolis or of the museum.
Contacts
Where it is
Tarquinia · Lazio
Notes
- Hours and prices as declared by the PACT: closed on Mondays; from 29 March to 12 October 2026 the necropolis opens 9:00-19:30 with last entry at 18:30, and the museum keeps those hours all year
- The site ticket costs 13 euros, museum and necropolis together, valid 30 days. The four-site circuit with Cerveteri costs 21 euros and is valid four months: if you see both, as this trip does, the circuit costs less than two site tickets
- Which tombs can be visited changes, and it is worth checking before you set off. The PACT publishes its notices to visitors on its website: between February and March 2026 the PNRR works were keeping a dozen of them closed, among them the Tomb of the Leopards, that of the Lionesses and that of Hunting and Fishing, while thirteen others were reopening. It is not a fault, it is how a site works where every chamber is a microclimate to be kept in balance
- We found the Tomb of the Leopards open, and the photograph in the gallery is ours: so that closure of early 2026 has passed, and it is the proof that those notices are to be read at their date and not taken as final. In the pediment the two leopards face each other on either side of a plant, and below run three klinai with the couples at the banquet, the musicians and the cup-bearers
- You look through glass, and the glass reflects. In our photographs you can see the reflections: it is not a fault of the shot, it is how the tomb is seen. Anyone who wants to look rather than photograph does better to put the phone away and bring their forehead up to the glass, with the chamber light on
- The Tomb of the Ogre is in another part of the necropolis and is not on the ordinary route
- In the museum, in palazzo Vitelleschi, are the terracotta winged horses from the Ara della Regina and the paintings detached from the tombs of the Chariots, of the Triclinium, of the Funeral Bed and of the Ship: they are chambers that can no longer be seen in the necropolis, and they are here
