An Etruscan Adventure thru Chiusi, Italy or How Wanderlust Woman Played Tour Guide for a Day

Chiusi, Italy is just a dot on the map of Tuscany but rich in experiences.  It is only about 150 square miles in size and less than 9,000 Tuscans live there; yet its role in Italy’s history, more specifically Etruscan history cannot be denied.  The Etruscans thrived from about 1200 to 550 B.C. and left behind a rich legacy of art and culture with an enduring mystery to this day – a language that archaeologists have never been able to fully understand.

The Etruscans had always intrigued me and part of my journey to Tuscany was to research and learn more about this society which vanished along with its isolated language.  The National Etruscan Museum is located there and I will write more about that in an upcoming post but this is where my memory begins for this is where I became tour guide to a bunch of wayward southerners from the U.S. and a few Japanese and German tourists tossed in for good measure……all because none of them spoke a word of Italian and I was able to say “ciao” and “grazie” to the museum’s curator.   You see, you book a tour when you get there and he waits until there are enough people around to make the drive into the hills worth his while.  Oh, by the way, he doesn’t drive so he nominates me to be chauffeur and lead car for our journey to the Tombe Etrusce.    Now this is made all the more ridiculous in that on my way from Sarteano to Chiusi, I stopped to ask a local for directions in my broken Italian.  The farmer proceeded to tell me that everything is closed…..you see “chiuso,” the Italian word for closed, sounds an awful lot like Chiusi.  Mama mia!

Indiana Jones has nothing on me!

This truly was a scene out of Around the World in 80 Days.  The direttore is in the front seat of my rented Mercedes SUV (hey, that’s the only automatic they had!).  He’s shouting out directions of “sinistra, a destra, dritto, no no no, signorina, sinistra,” while three cars follow so closely, fearful that if they lose me they will forever be trapped in gli Tombe Etrusche.  We climb higher and higher until we reach our first stop.  Parking is a challenge amid farms and goats crossing the road.  We manage to leave various sized autos here, there and everywhere, with the hope of not being cursed for killing off Pasquale’s basil plants.

But ah ha, Signore Direttore has a key, a really big skeleton key.  I kid you not.  It has to be about 1,000 years old but it’s going to open something interesting, I just know it.  And there it is – a door buried in a hill of dirt.  Hmmmmmmmm?  He opens it and we follow underground like lost sheep and I feel Like Lord Carnarvon on his quest for King Tut’s tomb.  This is so exciting.

It’s cold and dank but once we hunch over like Quasimodo for about 20 feet we enter…….. an empty space.  They left behind a sarcophagus but Direttore tells us most everything else from here is now……….where else?  Wait for it…………back in the museum.

Okay, onto the next stop – Direttore has an even bigger key and we climb across another tiny farm to enter another door buried in dirt but this one, this one holds the treasure trove.  Ok, not really but it is still so exciting.  This is the tomb of what we decipher to be the Pellegrina Family.  At least it looks like that in the Etruscan alphabet.  The

Could this be "Alma Pellegrina?"

sarcohpagus of  “Alma Pellegrina” has been left behind and so have some amazing frescoes, buried under farmland for nearly three-thousand years.  The ceilings are also loaded with live mosquitos and I’m thinking they have a virus from 3,000 years ago. Now, as Direttore kindly explains to us the history of this family, I feel a tap on my shoulder.  It’s Annabelle from Alabama.  “‘Scuse me, you know what he’s saying?  You speak Eye-talian?”  I tell them only a little but begin weaving this story of the Pellegrina Family.  I later confess that I don’t know if the translation was too accurate but Annabelle and hubby are more than happy, as are the Japanese family of 5 and the German couple who could understand English but not one word of Italian.

All in all, I had a wonderful day, feeling like Mrs. Indiana Jones and wishing I was the one holding the key to those tombs.  I would love to go back when no one is around!  Want to come?