Every year millions of tourists from all over the world flood Italy to admire wonderful works of art from different eras. Thousands of books have been written about Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples.
But the cities we want to tell about are not marked on any geographical maps and are not described in tourist guides. These are cities that arose more than two and a half thousand years ago. The way to them was paved by archaeology. Therefore, we call them new ancient cities.
The discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried under ash and covered by lava, was a sensation of the 18th century. For the 19th century, the excavations of Troy, whose real existence few believed in, were just as sensational. Nowadays, the identification of a new ancient city surprises no one. We have become accustomed to the wonders of archaeology. But even if newly discovered cities do not amaze our imagination, they provide much for understanding the past and creating more accurate and correct ideas about humanity’s path into the future!
From about a dozen new ancient cities, we selected seven that we consider the most significant. So, here are the seven wonders of modern archaeology.
Pyrgi, Gravisca, Acquarossa
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| A new ancient road. Now it leads people to the past. |
Until recently, the Etruscans were known as one of the most mysterious peoples on earth. This reputation they owe primarily to their language. Despite centuries of scholarly work, many of their inscriptions are barely understood. The debates about the origin of the Etruscans, which continue to this day, also played a large role in the perception of them as a mysterious people.
Following an ancient custom, the Etruscans built their cities not right by the sea, but at some distance from it. However, each of the 12 Etruscan city-states, united in a religious and political alliance, was supposed to have a port on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Aerial reconnaissance confirmed this assumption. Near the place called Santa-Severa, outlines of some structures were discovered, presumably belonging to the Etruscan city of Pyrgi.
Excavations that began in 1956 revealed two temples located parallel to each other, with their facades facing the sea. The larger temple, dated to 480–470 BCE, had three inner rooms for the Etruscan triad of gods — Tinia, Uni, Menrva, corresponding to the Roman Jupiter, Juno, Minerva. The smaller temple was built around 500 BCE.
Next to the large temple, remains of a painted bas-relief were found. Apparently, this is an image of a battle involving Zeus, Athena, and heroes of ancient myths. The bas-relief is a clear evidence of the influence of Greek culture on the Etruscans. The finds of painted vases with Greek inscriptions say the same. Curiously, the very name “Pyrgi” is Greek and means “towers”!
In 1964, a sensational discovery was made, which allowed establishing yet another influence on the Etruscans — Carthaginian. In the space between the temples, a hiding place was found, from which three rolled sheets of thin gold leaf were extracted — two with Etruscan, one with Phoenician inscriptions. Nearby were bronze nails with golden heads. These were used to attach the plaques to a door or a temple wall.
The Etruscan plaques were read using the parallel Phoenician text. It turned out to be a dedication from the ruler of Cære, Tefarie Velianas, to the goddess Juno — Astarte. It became clear that Pyrgi was part of Cære, specifically its port. This confirmed a fact known from works of ancient authors — the existence of a military-political alliance between Cære and Carthage. The temple at Pyrgi was a religious center of the entire Ceretan state and was under the special protection of its leader.
Later archaeologists uncovered a section of a paved road connecting Pyrgi with Cære and directly approaching the temple itself. This can be considered not just a trade route but also a road for sacred processions, similar to those in Greek cities.
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| Remains of a painted bas-relief from the city of Pyrgi |
The circumstances of the temples’ construction and the road can be understood in the light of known facts of the history of Cære. In a naval battle off the coast of Corsica (535 BCE), the Etruscans from Cære and their Carthaginian allies defeated the Greek Phocaeans. The captured sailors were brought to Cære and stoned to death there. Since then, an epidemic broke out, which superstitious and harsh Etruscans perceived as the wrath of a deity. Not knowing how to appease it, the Ceretans turned to the Delphic oracle. The Pythia advised to make sacrifices to the Phocaeans as heroes and to establish gymnastic contests and races in their honor. Apparently, the construction of one of the temples at Pyrgi is connected to the oracle’s instruction. This temple was dedicated to a female sea deity, known to the Greeks as Leucothea, and naturally, it was located right on the seashore. The further strengthening of relations between the Etruscans and Carthaginians in the early 5th century BCE led to the construction of the second temple, this time dedicated to Astarte, the Carthaginian goddess. After the temple was built, a paved road was laid to it. The sanctuary at Pyrgi strengthened its political, economic, and religious significance. This can be indirectly judged by the expedition of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius the Elder, undertaken in 384 BCE, which resulted in the looting and destruction of the temples. Apparently, at the time of the attack, the golden plaques were torn off the wall and hidden for better times. As often happens in history, those times never came. The Etruscan city ceased to exist.
Soon, a Roman colony named Pyrgi appeared on its ruins. In 1969, another coastal city, Gravisca, was found — a port of the famous Etruscan center Tarquinia. Already in the 6th–5th centuries BCE, Gravisca flourished. This is evidenced by its long streets forming extensive blocks, private and public buildings, warehouses.
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| Famous terracotta masks. |
Like in Pyrgi, there was a sanctuary with an enclosed area by a wall in Gravisca. In the center of the sacred area was a temple with two inner rooms for two deities. In a pit near the temple, remains of sacrifices were preserved: vessels with animal ashes, bronze spits on which meat dedicated to the gods was roasted. Numerous Greek-origin vases and lamps were found next to and inside the temple.
A marble column with a Greek inscription caused huge interest: “I belong to Apollo Aeginetan, I was ordered to be made by Sostratus.”
The father of history, Herodotus, told about the establishment of trade relations by the Greeks with the mysterious city of Tartessus, located somewhere on the Atlantic coast of Spain. A storm brought the Samian sailor Coleus beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and he ended up in Tartessus, then still unknown to the Greeks. Reporting the great profit Coleus made from trade with the Tartessians, Herodotus adds that even greater profit was made by the Aeginetan Sostratus. By the style of the letters, the inscription from Gravisca dates to the end of the 6th century BCE — the time of the known to Herodotus Sostratus. The coincidence of Sostratus’ homeland and the location of the temple of Apollo, to whom the dedication was made, suggests that the merchant and the dedicator were the same person.
It is easy to explain how Sostratus ended up in Gravisca. The route to Tartessus ran through Etruscan ports. The merchant from the island of Aegina had to sail around the Peloponnese, enter the Adriatic Sea, and, following along the southern Italy coast, enter the Tyrrhenian Sea, named after the Tyrrhenian Etruscans.
Archaeology led us to another Etruscan city located inland. We do not know its name and call it by the nearby modern settlement — Acquarossa.
Excavations by Swedish archaeologists that began in 1966 uncovered a fortification on an isolated hill. The largest building in the city — a temple — occupies the central place. It has three rooms for three deities. The remains of reliefs made of fired clay date the temple to the second half of the 6th century BCE, when the Etruscan states reached their highest economic and political flourishing.
The most interesting thing in Acquarossa is the residential houses. Previously, scholars could judge them only by funerary urns, representing their models, and by the internal structure of tombs. Now we know the layout of the houses, their walls, and roofs. Some houses had tiled roofs painted with animal figures or decorated with relief images of animals. One can be amazed not only by the craftsmanship with which these tiles were made but also by their purpose. After all, the pictures were not visible to people walking the streets. They could only be admired by birds.
Poseidonia - Paestum
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| Painted vases with inscriptions in Greek. |
This city, located on the shore of a dazzlingly blue bay, received the name of the sea god Poseidon. It was founded by Greek colonists in the 6th century BCE. Already in the 5th century BCE, from ships sailing to the land of the Etruscans, one could see the columns of three grandiose temples, unmatched even in Greece itself. It is no coincidence that this part of Italy was called "Greater Greece."
At the end of the 5th century BCE, Poseidonia was captured and destroyed by the Italic tribe of the Lucanians. It is recorded that the surviving inhabitants gathered in tears over the ruins of the city. Poseidonia had to let barbarians into its walls. Even its name was distorted. It became called Paestum.
At the end of the 18th century, the great German poet Wolfgang Goethe visited here. "I am in a completely alien world!" he wrote. Indeed, for Europeans of that time, the strictly Doric temples of Paestum were one of the few accessible monuments of Greek culture. No one then suspected that the main discoveries in this "alien world" were still ahead.
A few years ago, a local peasant came across a stone slab with his ploughshare and moved it. An underground rectangular chamber was revealed. Bright colors of wall paintings shone. This was the discovery of the first of the Paestum tombs. Now hundreds of them are known. This is a unique underground picture gallery. It depicts fantastic animals, women with funerary gifts, running two- and four-wheeled chariots, contests of fist fighters.
The drawing of a diver with an outstretched body in a dive was completely unexpected. Trying to determine the meaning of the image, scientists are at a loss. What is it: the spirit of the deceased plunging into the otherworldly waters? Ancient underwater contest? In any case, before us is a work of painting exceptional for its clarity of lines and confidence of colors.
Sybaris
In antiquity, anecdotes were told about the inhabitants of this city. There was a well-known collection called "Sybaritika." It was said that the Sybarites feared the sun and draped their streets with cloths to provide shade. Not wanting to trouble themselves with delivering amphorae, they laid pipes directly into their houses for wine. And — horror! — they bathed in warm water.
The supposed fabulous wealth of Sybaris attracted archaeologists’ attention. But the searches brought no success.
Only on September 30, 1969, at a press conference in Rome, it was announced that traces of dwellings and fragments of pottery were found at great depth. Sybaris was discovered using the latest electromagnetic sounding methods in the Parco di Cavallo area, on the surface of which is a Roman-era theater. Now the walls of houses, in which the carefree Sybarites lived in the 7th century BCE, are visible.
Elea
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| "The Diver" |
In the mid-6th century BCE, the growing Persian empire began threatening the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Most cities submitted to the conquerors. But the citizens of Phocaea launched their ships and went in search of a new homeland.
After long wanderings, they landed in Campania, where they captured and settled the city of Elea. The ruins of this city were known in the past century, but excavations began only about ten years ago.
The city, surrounded by massive fortress walls, was located on the slopes of a hill. City districts were connected by a large road. Rising up the hill, it passed through magnificent arched gates — masterpieces of Greek civil architecture.
The architectural appearance of Elea distinguished it from other cities of Greater Greece. Before us is a typical Asia Minor center — a testimony to the settlers’ loyalty to the traditions of their forever abandoned homeland.
Excavations confirmed that Elea was a city of high culture, as known from literary sources. Many statues, terracotta and bronze items, coins, inscriptions were found. One of the inscriptions preserved the name of Parmenides, the founder of the flourishing philosophical school in Elea.
Motya
Trying to colonize Italy and adjacent islands, the Greeks faced resistance not only from the Etruscans and local tribes but also from people from wealthy Phoenician cities. Phoenician colonization preceded or developed simultaneously with the Greek one. The most important Phoenician colonization center was the city of Carthage, founded in the 9th century BCE on the coast of North Africa, opposite Sicily. Among the settlements on the islands founded by people from the African coast, Motya in Sicily holds the first place.
In 1963, during an inspection of ruins among fields and vineyards, scientists came across a small quadrangle of land covered by a roof. From beneath it, rounded vases and stone funerary columns were visible. It immediately became clear that the vases were urns containing the bones of children sacrificed to the gods, and the funerary columns were walls erected in memory of the sacrifices. A site for sacrifices, called a tophat in biblical books, had to be searched nearby. When it was found, many archaeological treasures were extracted from it.
Numerous remarkable terracotta masks. Here is a male mask with a forehead and cheeks marked by deep folds, eyes shaped like a crescent moon, and a widely smiling mouth. Here is the goddess Astarte in an Egyptian-style wig, lifted by a band so that the hair falls behind the ears. Outside the sanctuary, archaeologists excavated the Carthaginian city with residential houses, a temple, and premises where amphorae were made and sold.
It seemed that nothing could be more fantastic than the idea of a "time machine" — a brilliant allegory embodying man’s age-old dream of infinitely extending life experience. The creator of this allegory turned out to be largely right. Technical progress opened up completely unexpected prospects for understanding the distant past. Archaeology, armed with the latest methods of locating monuments, dating them, and conservation, became that "time machine" about which Herbert Wells wrote. Thanks to it, we made a journey through the new ancient cities of Italy.
The subsequent Roman culture was formed based on the achievements of all the peoples of Italy, including the Etruscans, Greeks, and Carthaginians.