Etruscans

The exhibition "Etruscans. Lords of Ancient Italy", conceived and curated by the Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna, is part of the celebrations for the Year of Bilateral Relations for Culture and Tourism Italy-China and aims to present the Chinese public with the most significant traits of one of the most important civilisations of ancient Italy, the Etruscans.

Through the five sections of the exhibition, visitors will be led into the heart of pre-Roman Italy: they will be able to understand the geographical context and the political situation in which the history of the Etruscans and their cities developed; follow the main daily activities of Etruscan men and women; understand how they wrote; learn about their ideas on divinity and life beyond death; grasp the deep connections of their culture with that of the other peoples of the ancient Mediterranean.

The story unfolds thanks to 350 extraordinary objects from two of Italy's most important Etruscan collections, those of the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna and the Museo
Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. Both museums house prestigious Etruscan artefacts acquired over time through the work of collectors, but their collections also and above all bear
witness to the development of the Etruscan centres in their territory. That is because the Etruscans, in addition to the better known territory of central Italy corresponding to today's Tuscany and upper Latium, also inhabited the fertile plains of Campania to the south and the Po Valley to the north, so much so that ancient authors could say that, before the rule of Rome, almost the whole of Italy was under the rule of the Etruscans.