Sunday 16 October 2011

Hilltop town of Volterra

Friday 14 October

Brrrrr... What a cold day. We left this morning thinking it would be another nice warm day but we arrived at Volterra to find it freezing cold. It was very windy too. The Italians were rugged up in their warm coats and long pants. Mum and I froze. Brrr.



We tried to spend most of the time indoors so we visited the Etruscan Museum. It is one of the oldest museums in Italy. Volterra is one of oldest continually inhabited cities in Italy.











The etruscans settled there about 800BC and we saw roman ruins that originally dated to the first century. That's a very long time ago. In the museum we saw lots of objects that related to death. There were 100's of funerary urns where people's cremated remains were kept. The urns were very beautifully decorated. Many people were buried with their precious possessions. They were quite wealthy people.







There were lots of interesting displays.




These arrow heads and blades were from about 2-3000 BC


This was a roman grave that was built from roofing tiles.


There were thousands of old coins....


And thousands of old pots and vases.

We also visited the remains of a roman theatre and bath. It reminded me of our visit to Bath in England. Those Romans sure got around.



Here's dad walking along the corridor behind the theatre seats.



We didn't spend much time in the cold and found a baptistry to huddle in - I did some drawings of a nativity scene









Here's me huddling from the cold. We went into the Duomo that was opposite the baptistry. It was quite dark inside it but it had some lovely art.






We had some nice views on our way home of the area near we stayed.






Thats my mad dad driving.

Location:Roma

1 comment: