Lazio Explorer

Etruscan Places follows D.H. Lawrence as he travels around the maremma with his companion Brewster, staying in cheap hotels as he visits Etruscan ruins in Cerverteri, Tarquinia, Vulci and Volterra. The book has six chapters, three of which are on Tarquinia and it's painted tombs. I found the first half of the book to be a little difficult to get into, but as the book progressed I enjoyed it more and more. D.H. Lawrence seems a little obsessed (as were the Etruscans) with the afterlife, searching out burial hills (usually on the hills nearby the Etruscan town) and looking for underground tombs. I guess this is because there isn't much else left from the Etruscans, but it did leave me wanting more. After a while, one tomb seems like another. Having said this, the descriptions of the tombs are lovely, if a little spoilt by overly-romantic descriptions. D.H. Lawrence seems to have a thing against the Romans/the modern world in general, and in my opinion does tend to over-romanticize the Etruscans in some parts of the book. He seems to have held the opinion that something we can't understand must be better in some way than something we can, preferring to fantasize about the Etruscans rather than trying to understand them.

Having said that, I did enjoy the book. It's a good mix of archeological and travel anecdotes, covering both the ancient world of the Etruscans and capturing the mood in Italy in the 1930s. Despite the occasional over-philosophizing, I enjoyed the writing style and found it quite easy to read. Coming in at a bantam weight of 169 pages (in the recently released Dodo Press edition), this is a fun book to read for anyone heading to the maremma region with a passing interest in the Etruscans. However, if you aren't heading that way and don't care for the Etruscans, there's nothing to see here. Having read it, I'm definitely interested in visiting the places mentioned in the book, just to see if I can find them and how they have changed over the last 80 years.

If you want to know more about the Etruscans, check out this interesting website.

More can be found about the fascinating life of D.H. Lawrence here.
If you fancy reading this yourself, you could buy it from the new Lazio Explorer Amazon store by clicking here (go on, you know you want to!)