In the Footsteps of the Etruscans: An Insider’s Italy Family Journey

My father, Howard Shaw, was a superb, agile writer, an avid delighter in life — especially in all things preposterous — and among the most literate, literary, and articulate people I have known. And, relevant here, my father was also an impassioned amateur Etruscologist.

My mother and maternal grandmother were no less devoted. Each had her own dog-eared copy of the first edition Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, annotated in pencil (“site now open only 9–11 on Sunday, contact custodian Fabio”), and stuffed with postcards of tombs, artworks, and sites. But it was my father who took his passion further, weaving the Etruscans into the heart of his best novel, The Crime of Giovanni Venturi (later the Broadway musical, Giovanni Venturi, starring the celebrated Italian opera star, Cesari Siepi).

Much of my early childhood was therefore spent exploring Etruscan sites throughout Lazio and Tuscany, in the company of my father, my mother, and a picnic basket.

How could the romance and mystery of the Etruscans not leave their mark? One of my earliest memories is of visiting Cerveteri, a flashlight in hand — so large I could barely hold it — descending into the Tomb of the Reliefs with Howard at my side, helping me navigate the boulder-like stairs of damp, volcanic tufa. It is impossible to overstate the thrill.  And then: the tomb itself, a preserved domestic interior carved into stone, which spoke directly to my five-year-old imagination.

The Tomb is a 42-square-meter window into everyday Etruscan life. Household objects are carved in low relief on the walls — armor, tweezers, cords, ladles, pitchers, knives, skewers, tables.

A cat, a duck, a goose, a dice game called astagali. Cerberus, the three-headed dog, appears too, as does a demon with a fish tail. And the long stone beds, improbably inviting, pillows arranged just so — cozy enough for a rest, Howard said. Would I like to try one?  Yes, I would ! But my mother’s voice from the top of the stairs cut short the invitation.

With some effort, my five-year-old legs carried me back into the sunlight: butterflies, lizards, panini con prosciutto crudo, and several glasses of wine for my parents.

And now, all these years later — how could my enthusiasm not reach you?

Rome is fortunate in its proximity to at least ten major Etruscan sites. Clients visit by train or with car and driver, sometimes with superb @understandingrome, sometimes on their own with our materials. Others go on day trips from our coastal villas or selected hotels in Tuscany. From Rome, Cerveteri is just a 50-minute drive. We know we’re near when the sea gleams to our left and a steep road rises inland.

When you arrive, as I did at age five, you may stop to absorb the atmosphere. Cerveteri is a city of the dead laid out like one of the living — round tombs shaped like pudding molds line stone streets, some branching into lanes and tiny piazzas. Some tombs are carved into trenches; others into low, domed tumuli with a fairy-tale quality. Several mimic huts or houses, with carved architectural detail. Cerveteri preserves the only example of Etruscan domestic architecture to have survived.

It is fragrant year-round, sometimes with arugula, fennel, broom, mint, and chamomile. In other seasons, poppies, mallow, sweet pea, and buttercups, all springing from porous tufa. One of the site’s pleasures is that no one tries to tame the exuberance of the wildflowers.

Which Etruscan site will be your first? If Howard were here, he’d say Cerveteri. His daughter agrees — but then I think of the frescoes at Tarquinia, of the bridge at Vulci, the mood of Tuscania, the museum in Chiusi, and my mouth begins to water.

And surely, I will send you first to one of Italy’s most remarkable museums: always quiet, Rome’s Villa Giulia, the perfect place to ground yourself in Etruscan culture — its beliefs, daily life, and funerary practices — before venturing to the sites. Howard spent hours there. You can too, taking in frescoes, pottery, bronzes, jewelry, and the haunting Sarcophagus of the Spouses.

When we think of central Italy, we think first of Rome — its monuments, its weight, its story. But beneath lies an older narrative. The Etruscans were a sophisticated, pre-Roman culture whose artistry, beliefs, and domestic life helped shape the Rome we know. Absorbed and subsumed as they eventually were into Ancient Rome, what remains of them is fragmentary: objects, tombs, painted walls. Howard was particularly drawn to their bucchero ware — black pottery, technically refined — and to their intricate jewelry, both of which he wove into The Crime of Giovanni Venturi.

He liked to look closely. And he taught me to do the same — especially with the little things, for example votive offerings shaped like animals, their presence inviting a story.

The Etruscans left behind no epic texts, no grand public buildings — just traces. Fragments of beauty, mystery, and a quiet intimacy that lives on in carved stone, painted walls, and personal objects. They reward the patient observer. And they reveal themselves only to those willing to look again.

That so much about them remains a mystery made them perfect material for a novel, and it’s no wonder Howard felt such gratitude to a culture that offered him both inspiration and plot.

Today, with Insider’s Italy, I continue that habit of attention. For 36 years, I’ve helped travelers step off the well-trodden path and into the Etruscan world. By visiting Etruscan places, you walk not only through what came before Rome — but through the landscapes and stories that shaped my family.

Let me take you beyond the familiar, into the Italy my father and mother never stopped exploring — and that you can now make your own: the world of the Etruscans.