door in the partition-wall, all three of the same Egyptian form—the triclinial arrangement of the rock-hewn benches, as though the dead, as represented on their sarcophagi, were wont to recline at a banquet these things are enough to convince one that in their sepulchres the Etruscans, in many respects, imitated their habitations, and sought to make their cemeteries as far as possible the counterparts of the cities on the opposite heights.'-Dennis.

(Toscanella is most easily reached, either from Viterbo, 18 miles by a good road; or from Corneto, 17 miles distant. There is a very humble inn, but if possible the visitor should take an introduction to some private family in the town. The Etruscan sites beyond Toscanella are seldom visited, and in some instances can only be approached on horseback or on foot. The accommodation is of the humblest

description.)

Toscanella is visible from a great distance, on a height above the valley of the Marta.

'Vedemo Toscanela tanto anticha

Quanto alcun altra de questo paese.'-Fazio degli Uberti. Toscanella was the Etruscan Tuscania, mentioned by Pliny as amongst the municipal communities of Etruria, but otherwise unknown to history. Its early importance has probably been much exaggerated, owing to the discovery of a single tomb of great magnificence, which ought rather to be considered to attest the wealth and importance of an individual family. There are scarcely any traces of the Etruscan city, and only small vestiges of reticulated walling to mark the Roman settlement which followed it. The mediaeval remains of Toscanella are far more important. The hill of San Pietro, which is outside the later town, was probably the arx of the Etruscan city. It is surrounded by a band of square mediaeval towers, which are double—'a tall, slender tower being encased, with no intervening space, in an outer shell of masonry.' On this height also is the cathedral (S. Pietro), a most interesting building, partly of the 7th, partly of the 11th century. The wonderfully rich central division of the façade is covered in its upper story with figures of men, devils, and beasts, possible and

impossible, in high relief. Within, the church is a museum of pagan relics, the columns which divide the nave from the aisles are evidently Roman, the font rests on a pagan altar, and the crypt beneath the high-altar, said to have been a Roman bath, has twenty-eight ancient pillars.

'The date of the interior is known. It forms part of a church which was built about the middle of the seventh century, when the bodies of the saints Secundiano, Marcellino, and Veriano were discovered (at Celli in 628) and brought to Toscanella. A splendid crypt was, as usual, prepared for their reception beneath the sanctuary..

'The front must have been rebuilt at much later times. The style is very peculiar. In the works of the Lombards we find an abundance of dragons and serpents, but we do not find them coursing down the front, from the caves to the portal, as in the present instance. At Viterbo, however, which is at the distance of only a few miles from Toscanella, traces of the same peculiarity exist. The same extraordinary animals, though injured by time, and half-concealed by whitewash, may still be perceived on the front of the Church of San Giovanni in Zoccoli in that city. That church is known to have been complete in 1037. It may therefore be safely assumed that the existing front of San Pietro of Toscanella was built in the first half of the eleventh century.

'The ruined building, which adjoins the church, is the remains of the episcopal palace. The bishop's chair, which had been removed from Santa Maria to San Pietro in the seventh century, was again removed to the church of S. James in the sixteenth century, when Toscanella had shrunk to its present limits.'-H. Gally Knight.

Very near S. Pietro is the still older and exceedingly curious church of S. Maria, whose front of the 10th century is also decorated with monsters. The church ends in an apse which has a fresco of the Last Judgment, and over the high-altar is a baldacchino. The richly-decorated pulpit is a beautiful work of the 13th century. Ughelli (Italia Sacra) mentions that the episcopal chair was removed from S. Maria to S. Pietro in the middle of the 7th century, which proves that at least in the early part of the 7th century this church must have been in existence, and it is almost certain to have been in existence in the 6th century also, as the signature of a bishop of Toscanella occurs in 595

The church was reconsecrated in 1206.

'We may conclude that Santa Maria was a finished building at the

close of the sixth century; and the style of the interior of the church corresponds with that time. It is a studious, and not an unsuccessful, imitation of the Roman. All the pillars have foliage capitals, with no admixture of imagery; but, in the cornice, are seen a few of the symbolical figures which at that period began to make their appearance in churches.'-H. Gally Knight.

After the churches, the chief attraction at Toscanella is the Etruscan museum and garden of the brothers Carlo and Secondiano Campanari, to whom the excavations of Tuscania are due, and who have largely contributed by the sale of their antiquities to all the important Etruscan collections of Europe. In the garden is a facsimile of an Etruscan tomb, opened by the Campanari, and inscribed 'Ecasuthinesl' over the entrance. It contains the ten sarcophagi found in

the original tomb. On each lies the owner, half reclining as if at a banquet, and each seems to be pledging his neighbour with the goblet in his hand. The flower-beds are fringed by sarcophagi, with Etruscans, male and female, reclining on the lids, leaning upon their left arms, and looking at the spectator, and most strange is the effect! In the tomb called Il Calcarello, opened by the Campanari in 1839, no less than twenty-seven sarcophagi were found, those of the women forming an inner circle, outside which lay their husbands. All the sarcophagi are of nenfro.

The tombs of Tuscania are chiefly hewn out of the cliff in the neighbouring ravines. They have no architectural decorations. The most remarkable is that called Grotta della Regina, half a mile from the town, beneath the Madonna dell' Olivo. A long passage opens upon a square chamber supported by two columns, and behind it winds a labyrinthine passage, which leaves the tomb on one side, and, after many twists and turns, returns to it on the other. To visit this, lights are necessary.

Few travellers will penetrate beyond Toscanella, yet, beyond it, lie a collection of Etruscan sites, one at least of which, Sovana, is well worth seeing, though it is 30 miles distant.

Fourteen miles north of Toscanella is Ischia, an Etruscan site, with ravines full of ordinary tombs. Two miles west of this is Farnese, also of Etruscan origin. Two or three miles further is Castro, where the hill-side is covered with the ruins of a flourishing city, utterly destroyed by Pope Innocent X. in 1647, because its bishop had been murdered by Farnese, Lord of Castro! The see was at the same time removed to Acquapendente. Castro is a beautiful place, with ravines overhung by ilexes, two ruined bridges, and tombs and columbaria hewn in the cliffs.

Five miles west of Ischia is Valentano, looking down upon the Lake of Bolsena, whence a bridle-path leads twelve miles to Pitigliano, passing on the way the little Lake of Mezzano, supposed to have been the Lacus Statoniensis, mentioned by Pliny and Seneca. Pitigliano is a large place, picturesquely situated like Civita Castellana on a tongue of land, surrounded by ravines. Close outside the city gate, called Porta di Sotto, is a fine fragment of the ancient wall in eight courses of huge tufa blocks. The neighbouring ravines are exceedingly beautiful, especially near the little waterfall called 'La Cascatella.' The height called Poggio Strozzoni was once occupied by a castle of the Counts Orsini, said to have been ruined after the last count, in a fit of jealousy, flung his wife into the ravine from the bridge above the Cascatella. Two strange figures lie here hewn out of the rock. The people call them 'Orlando and his wife.' Unfortunately they are only of cinque-cento origin, colossal ornaments of the Orsini villa.

Five miles N.E. of Pitigliano is Sorano, also an Etruscan site, and a most picturesque place.

'In the centre of the town rises a precipitous mass of rock, whose summit commands one of the most romantic scenes in this part of Italy. The town clustering round the base of the height-the grand old feudal castle, with its hoary battlements, crowning the cliffs behind-the fearful precipices and profound chasms at your feet -and the ranges of mountains in front, rising in grades of altitude and majesty, to the sublime icy crest of Monte Amiata.'- Dennis.

Only 2 miles from Pitigliano is Sovana, one of the most interesting spots in Etruria, and possessing a greater variety of sculptured tombs than any other place. The site was afterwards occupied by the Roman colony of Suana mentioned by Ptolemy and Pliny. The existing village stands on a tongue of land, ending on one side in the square tower of the cathedral, for it is still the see of a bishop, and, on the other, in a picturesque mediaeval castle. It was the birthplace of Hildebrand—Gregory VII., and in 1240 sustained a siege from Frederick II.

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Sovana can only be visited with safety in the winter or early spring it is ruined by the malaria, and the city has dwindled to a miserable plague-stricken hamlet. The finest of its tombs is that called La Fontana, discovered by Mr. Ainsley in 1843, till which time Sovana was utterly unknown to Englishmen. It is on the opposite side of the ravine, which is reached by the western gate of the town. Above an arched recess is a Doric frieze, and then a pediment sculptured in bold relief with figures of a mermaid and a winged genius. The tomb is about 17 feet wide, and 17 high, the pediment occupying 7 feet. A long line of tombs, of Egyptian character, occupies the face of the cliff (Poggio Prisca) beyond La Fontana, but they are almost concealed by the brushwood. On the opposite side of the valley is the Grotta Pola, with a front cut in the tufa like the portico of a temple, having once had apparently four columns, of which only one now remains. In the same cliff (Poggio Stanziale) are many more Egyptian-like tombs, and some 'house-tombs' with ribbed and ridged roofs, one of them decorated with a colossal head on its pediment.

Sovana may be reached from Acquapendente or Orbetello as well as from Toscanella.1

Eight miles west from Sovana is Saturnia, reached by a bridle-path which fords the Fiora. It occupies a striking

The author has never been able in person to visit Pitigliano, Sovana, or Saturnia. He is indebted entirely for his information to Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, to which all-important work he refers the reader for details, if he has any idea of penetrating into Central Etruria.