of the ''Mura dell'Arce''. Vetulonia has
Etruscan origins. It was, by 600 BC, part of the
Etruscan League of twelve cities.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus places the city within the
Latin alliance against
Rome in the seventh century BC. According to
Silius Italicus (
Punica VIII.485ff), the Romans adopted their
magisterial insignia, the
Lictors' rods and
fasces and the
curule seat, from Vetulonia; in 1898, a tomb in the necropolis was discovered with a bundle of iron rods with a double-headed axe in the centre, and soon afterwards, a grave
stela inscribed for Avele Feluske was discovered, on which the fasces were pictured.
Pliny the Elder and
Ptolemy also mention the town. The rich votive furnishing from the two extensive
necropoleis attest to the importance of Vetulonia's elite. The ''Mura dell'Arce'' (
cyclopean walls) date probably from the 6th-5th century BC, and aerial photography has revealed further stretches, which show the political and commercial importance of Vetulonia, which was famous for its goldsmiths. Under the
Roman Empire, however, it shrank to a secondary center, with the northward spread of
malaria. Little is known also about medieval Vetulonia: first fought over by the abbots of San Bartolomeo di Sestinga and the Lambardi family of Buriano, it was acquired by the commune of
Massa Marittima in 1323. Nine years later it was handed over to
Siena. The site of the ancient city was not identified before 1881. The Etruscan city situated on the hill of Colonna di Buriano, where there are remains of
city walls of massive
limestone, in almost horizontal courses, was accompanied by two
necropoleis partly excavated by
Isidoro Falchi in 1885-86; the town was renamed Vetulonia by royal decree in 1887. The objects discovered in its extensive seventh-century
necropolis, where over 1,000 tombs have been
excavated, are now in the museums of Grosseto and
Florence. The most important tombs, in this "richest and most interesting tomb group of northern Etruria", were covered by
tumuli, which still form a prominent feature in the landscape. An archaeological museum, the Museo Isidoro Falchi, was opened in 2000. == See also ==