Necropoli del Poggino site features

Tomb 1 is the one that still has its approach. It keeps a dromos of the donkey-back type — a sunken entrance corridor with a humped profile — and walking in you find the original thresholds still in place. The door itself is lost; it must have been closed by a stone slab, and because these tombs could be used more than once, a hinged opening system can be imagined.

It had three chambers. The two to the right and left of the entrance were found badly damaged, probably from repeated violations. The central chamber can still be seen at its original dimensions, and at its centre the pillar that carried the covering has been put back where it stood — the roof was probably made of slabs arranged in steps, borne on that pillar.

Two stones, used differently. The tombs are built of alberese, the local limestone that varies from grey to pale yellow and has a smooth surface, and of travertine, probably imported from other areas of the territory of Siena; alongside them a second limestone, recognisable by its porous, rough feel.

Tomb 2 is the simple version. No dromos and a single chamber; the two stones that formed the door are still standing. Small as it is, it was covered by a tumulus, and inside the covering was of the same stepped kind.

Tomb 3 is the great one. The largest in the necropolis and the oldest, the first to be built, at the end of the 7th century BC. A considerable part of its mound survives, which is what gives it its monumental look. A long donkey-back dromos leads to a vestibule and then to three cells arranged in a cross; the entrance threshold is still standing. Inside are three chambers and a smaller room at the back. Travertine is used widely here, especially in the central pillar that bore the dome.

Tomb 3 was altered in antiquity. It is very probable that the main chamber was modified already in the Etruscan period: the left-hand part, where the sarcophagus presumably stood, seems to have been created later, to enlarge the burial chamber.

Tomb 4 is the last. The most recent in the necropolis, dated by its material to the 5th century BC, and built like tomb 2: no dromos, a single chamber, a similar covering. A standing block of travertine lets you imagine the structure of its door.

A path between four tombs

What makes this site unusual is that it is a route. The four visible tombs are joined to one another by a path that winds through the wood, so the visit is a short walk between monuments rather than a look at one.

The donkey-back dromos

Tombs 1 and 3 keep their dromos a schiena d'asino, the humped sunken corridor driven in from the hillside. It is the most immediately legible piece of Etruscan construction on the site, and in tomb 1 the original thresholds are still in place.

The pillar in tomb 1

At the centre of the central chamber, put back where it belongs, stands the pillar that carried the roof — probably slabs laid in steps, corbelled inward and resting on it. It is the clearest demonstration anywhere on the site of how these chambers stood up.

Tomb 3: a princely burial

The dimensions and the richness of what remained of the grave goods allow tomb 3 to be attributed to a powerful local family of princely rank. The fragment of furniture recovered from the small rear cell dates it to the end of the 7th century BC: the remains of a cinerary urn, an iron fragment that decorated a wooden parade chest, incised ivory plaques, and fragments of bronze vessels.

Restoration you can read

Where the walls of tomb 3 were rebuilt, blocks of yellow tufa were used specifically to distinguish them from the original masonry. That is an honest restoration, and it means a visitor can tell what is ancient simply by colour.

Greek wine jars in a Tuscan wood

Among the material from tomb 1 are two Greek black-figure amphorae of the mid-6th century BC, one of them carrying a banquet scene. The Fondazione Musei Senesi, which exhibits them, reads them as precious wine containers for the aristocratic ritual of the symposium, whose very decoration expresses the Etruscan elites' adherence to Greek cultural models.