a Tour of Rome, Vatican, Etruria Sunday March 30

We were all excited: it was the last sunday of the month, and therefore there was free entrance to the Vatican Museum. So we formed a group and wanted to go there, but unfortunately we decided to start at Piazza di Spagna and Trinita dei Monti and walk from there to the Vatican. We spent time at Augustus's monument, at the Ara Pacis and Hadrian's castle , and by the time we reached the Vatican it was past 12 and the Museum had closed its entrance.  So we stayed a while in Vatican square and then walked along the Corso towards Piazza Venezia, from where I visited the Museum on Capitol Hill. (see special post on Capitol).


For those of you who have missed the Vatican Museum , here is the official site and you may select those collections of interest to you:  http://www.museivaticani.va , Choose your language and this will open

choose Collections Online, and then Virtual Visit -this will allow you to view the most famous pieces.

They also have an Etruscan collection (see photo). Here a few notes on the predecessors of Rome in Italy, namely the Etruscan city "states" in Toscana and elsewhere, before continuing with Rome and Roman cities ( the Vatican evidently being only one of the hills of Rome).

Map of Etrurian cities (apparently there was a league of twelve in Tuscia, and more in the Po river plains)

Veii, Gabii, Tarquinia, Caere were the most important in the immediate neighborhood of Rome (see post on Villa Giulia).

On our last day we visited  Cencelle and passed Sta. Severa, a few km before (/Civitavecchia  built on the Etruscan  town of Cosa), which itself was  built on the ruins of Pyrgi, the ancient port of Caere (Cerveteri).

 (cf.Wikipedia Pyrgi, Caere, Cosa).
The Wikipedia article on Civitavecchia you will tell you the following:

"The harbour was constructed by the Emperor Trajan at the beginning of the 2nd century. The first occurrence of the name Centum Cellae is from a letter by Pliny the Younger (AD 107). The origin of the name is disputed: it has been suggested that it could refer to the centum ("hundred") halls of the villa of the emperor. In the early high Middle Ages, Centumcellae was a Byzantine stronghold. Raided by the Saracens in 828, it was later acquired by the Papal States."    Note here that "high Middle Ages" is a wrong translation of Alto Medievale, which as we all know by now means Early Middle Ages. By that time it had been acquired by Pope Leo IV, before the Arab raids.

I will get back to Cencelle with more fotos on the last post of this Blog, but here are some relevant links:

.http://www.lazionascosto.it/cencelle.html

For those who missed the exposition in the Trajan Forum because they were at the police reporting the theft of their wallets, here is the reference to it

http://www.mercatiditraiano.it/mostre_ed_eventi/mostre/forma_e_vita_di_una_citta_medievale_ leopoli _cencelle

A report  (in Italian with an english Version  for some pages except for Cencelle) is found

http://www.storiadellacitta.it/dibattito_scientifico/cencelle.htm .

This page is new but has interesting Information on medieval towns, monasteries and fortresses with bibliog.

muro con torre di Cencelle