Beneath a quiet suburb of Perugia lies one of the best-preserved Etruscan family tombs in Italy. A staircase leads down into a chamber cut from the rock and shaped to echo a Roman house, with an atrium and side rooms, where the Velimna family, Volumni in Latin, placed their dead in travertine and terracotta urns.
The urn of Arnth Velimna Aules shows him reclining as if at a banquet, a Roman fashion adopted by the Etruscan elite. The tomb dates to the third or second century BC and was rediscovered in 1840. It belongs to the larger Palazzone necropolis of nearly 200 tombs at Ponte San Giovanni, with an antiquarium beside it.
Sources and citations (4)
- Musei Nazionali di PerugiaIpogeo dei Volumni e Necropoli del PalazzonePage title, address, and state-site identityRead source
- Direzione Regionale Musei UmbriaStatuto dell'Ipogeo dei Volumni e Necropoli del PalazzonePreamble and Article 1: tomb, necropolis, antiquarium and institutional identityRead source
- Comune di PerugiaPerugia: inaugurato il cantiere di riqualificazione dell'Ipogeo dei Volumni e della Necropoli del PalazzonePINQuA 1 Ponte San Giovanni context and Volumni-Palazzone project sectionRead source
- Musei Nazionali di PerugiaVideoguide in L.I.S.LIS introduction: tomb excavated in second half of third century BCERead source
