On this enigmatic culture of which practically nothing was known until recent times have been carried out based on different aspects of science, history and archeology that have provided invaluable information about how they lived based mainly on their tombs on the constructions that were carried out to perpetuate the memory of their deceased.
The Etruscans imitated the distribution, constructive and architectural model of the cities in which they lived and reproduced them in the tombs where they supposed, according to their religious beliefs that the people who died would rest in an environment similar to the one they had in life. They came to make true cities, only these were for funeral purposes.
So we find tombs with the distribution and interior design imitating the rooms of a house, especially those that corresponded to aristocrats, important personalities and wealthy people. They placed banks, personal objects, ornaments, jewels and sculptures among other things that have resisted the passage of time and that constitute in many cases true works of art.
Types of Etruscan burials
-
The tomb in the shape of a pit or well: excavated on the floor and covered by a horizontal tombstone or with two tombstones forming a kind of simple roof. It is the simplest type of burial destined for the most humble class people. Many Etruscan polls containing human remains have been found.
-
The glass of mud or canopo, on which drawings were made with banquet scenes, the handles and the lid were shaped like figures. Over time these vessels acquire human form, the head being the head, and the handles.
-
The Cipo is another important funeral container, in the form of a menhir, will be decorated with mundane, procreation and future life scenes.
-
The Settimello is another type of funeral monument that is placed to the tombs inputs, it is a cipo with four lions raising its threatening legs, and ornaments similar to palm trees between them.
-
The hypogeo were excavated cameras in the rock already in the seventh century. Destined for people with greater purchasing power, noble and aristocrats. The interior of a house is imitated here, they are located next to the other forming streets and creating true cities being called tombs a given. These also have decorated walls and structured rooms imitating the interior of the houses.
-
Mound. They existed in the VII and VI ac centuries were mounds of land to the outside that could be up to 40 meters in diameter. They were not perfectly aligned; But they also have the distribution of cities. A hall leads to different cameras decorated with reliefs that imitated the interior of a house. They had pilasters, windows, banks, vessel chairs, ornaments, small sculptures creating a pleasant atmosphere as if the deceased were still alive. The mounds They have a circular shape, forms a low wall built of ashlars, it is vaulted and an abroad imitates a natural hill. The funeral chamber is decorated with various wall paintings or with reliefs with scenes of fight, games, banquets and festive themes where the characters are shown living, cheerful and in the apogee of your health and well -being.
The Etruscan temples
The Etruscan temples were located on a high esplanade on the outside of the city. Although at first they were open; Delimited only symbolically, later the temples are covered and take the same quadrangular structure that was used in civil constructions for homes, after all it was also like a house only that collectively paid in it taxed their deities. The type of cell structure; which sometimes triples to house greater number of people was the characteristic constructive typology. Of the materials that were used the stone used for the basement was the strongest and most durable, in fact this is the only thing that has remained as evidence of these Etruscan religious constructions. The rest of the structure used very perishable materials subject to the destruction of time such as wood and clay. They covered the walls and columns with ceramic plates that were decorated with different tones of bright colors predominantly the red, oranges, and yellow.
These temples were accessed daring a large staircase in the front of the building that led the faithful to a stay formed by columns as an atrium or open hall; No walls but roofed. These columns could be found in some temples also on the sides but never in the rear. In this they differed from the Greek pantheon who worried so much about the perfection of mathematical measures in the design of plants in their constructions.
The structure of the temple was adintelado wearing a double pending splendid. The cells were covered with a unique roof that unified all the interior space predominantly by the central that was always wider.
These temples They had in the pediment, especially from the seventh century, sculptures made in Terracota, which of course have been lost. These sculptures were apparently large and could see from considerable distance. This is another aspect in which it differs from the Greek temples in which the sculptures in the pediment were in perfect proportion with the measures of the building therefore were smaller and scarce. The Etruscan temple did not possess Krepis or crepid, protuberant structure that if they had the Greek temples and the Etruscans ever used a rear porch.
The Etruscan columns
They used the columns preferably as a support system but these were simple did not have fixed parts; They resemble the Doric style columns, and their shape and structure change over time giving way to the column known as Tuscany. It should be noted that the capitals of these columns are worked freely in their forms, which resulted in various designs according to the inspiration of their builders. Comparatively with the Doric order, the Tuscan capital was a little more decorated.
Main characteristics of Etruscan columns.
– The shaft of these columns was straight using as in the case of the temples the polychromy.
– Strong basement.
– These columns have the equine, the abacus, the plinth, and the hypotraquelium.
Civil constructions
Virtually all rest with only few exceptions to civil constructions belonging to the Etruscan culture has been lost but because of the funeral constructions it is known that they used the cooked brick and the tapial. Of course they also used wood for doors, frames and covers. The Etruscans did not use marble, they used a stone that did not have much quality to reinforce the structures of the basements and for the angles of these constructions.
Etruscan cities
Etruscan cities They were home run and divided into grids. It is known that these cities were surrounded by thick walls and the city dares the main main entrance doors arriving at the two main streets that crossed. The doors were guarded by figures of protective geniuses and were of simple construction practically without decoration but strong and reinforced by placing them under a half -point arch between two towers.
In the oldest period of this culture, the houses of the inhabitants of the humble extraction cities were very simple, they looked like huts or houses circular and were manufactured with tapial and covered with light wood and branches. The houses of wealthy people were built with more quality materials but were equally circular until this model of housing approximately in the eighth century in which the houses began to be built following plants home run.
In this period of the eighth century, there is a clear difference between the constructions that were made for humble people made for the wealthy class; This difference being even more accentuated by having in this period better materials and new construction techniques. The houses began to be built larger and taking advantage of the possibilities that the quadrangular plant made it possible to design the rooms around an inner central courtyard.
Varieties of Etruscan Patios
– With him Impuvio in the center and the cover with four aspects inwards.
– With him display with the cover with four slopes outside.
These houses had a single access or entrance door, there were no doors outward or rear; nor on the sides of the house. The tiles with which the roofs were covered were flat and the columns were made with poor or wooden materials.
The Etruscans, from the seventh century BC. C., they will create the first quality buildings and the first engineering works in the Italian Peninsula their constructive models inherited from Greece although admonished to their needs and tastes make up the basis on which the Romans later build their cities.
Most important contributions from Etrusca architecture
– The use of the arc and the vault which comes from oriental influences.
– As in Greek art predominantly linked structures. The buildings have almost no sculptural decoration except some terracotta sculptures that were put in the pediment of the temples.
– They created a new order, the Tuscan, derived from the Greek Doric order; Simple base, smooth shaft and capitel similar to the Doric.
– The structure of the Etruscan temples which lacked columns in the rear as in Greek plants, was later taken by the Romans as a construction model for their religious constructions.
– The doors of fortifications with semicircular arches between two towers.
– Construction of tombs placing them like the houses in the cities with a quadrangular structure and forming blocks or blocks with their respective signaling. Structure that inherited Rome and extended through the rest of the world reaching to this day.
It is important to read the other articles on this page about Etruscan art about painting, ceramics and general aspects of Etruscan culture that help to better understand this enigmatic, ancient and little known culture.