LARTH – The Etruscan Rooms of Sinalunga

LARTH – the Etruscan Rooms of Sinalunga is a permanent exhibit that combines Etruscan artifacts from the necropolis of San Giustino and the nearby Etruscan settlement of Le Carceri, both in the Sinalunga area. Located at Via Spadaforte 31, the exhibition space features display cases with restored artifacts and cinerary urns.

Some of the materials found in the necropolis, displayed in the showcases on the left, testify to the close contact the Etruscans had with the city of Chiusi, linked to an aristocratic class of people who liked to emphasize their social status through the deposition, namely in funerary goods, of objects such as personal ornaments, precious gold jewelry, bucchero ceramic ware used at banquets and rare vases featuring black- and red-figures imported from Greece, arriving through the mediation of the capital.

The urn with the inscription L:frenti/nate:step/rnal—Larth Frentinate (son) of a Stepri—was found around 1860 and currently constitutes the only intact epigraphic evidence preserved in the necropolis. It is to the owner’s name, one of the most common in Etruria, that the title of the exhibition alludes.

The layout of the final room is intended to represent one of the tombs at the time of discovery, with the intention of offering visitors the excitement of an archaeological discovery by showing the fragmentary and confused state of the objects left behind by violators, so as to hint at the extensive work of reconstruction and study that leads to an understanding of the finds and their significance.

The exhibition concludes with the display cases on the right, safeguarding artifacts from a vast Etruscan settlement known to have been at the present-day Villa de Le Carceri, 656 feet (200 meters) from the San Giustino necropolis. The site was greatly prosperous, especially in the Archaic period. The materials prove the presence of buildings with elevations in reed or mud brick. The vast number of fragments of bucchero decorated with a cylinder mainly hark back to open forms such as goblets and cups, perhaps to be connected to a place of worship whose presence is evidenced by praying statuettes and other bronze objects laid out as votive offerings. 

The exhibition is open to the public during the summer months. For more information, please contact the Municipal Tourist Office via ufficio.turistico@comune.sinalunga.si.it.