ROSELLE

Interesting and extensive Etruscan and Roman ruins, little visited.

Photo by LepoRello (via Wikipedia)

About 10 km north of Grosseto, well-signed from the Siena-Grosseto road (follow brown or yellow signs to “Rovine” or “Ruderi” (ruins) di Roselle, or to Parco Archaelogico – not those to Bagno Roselle, which is a small village some kilometres away. It is open from 8.30-19.00 between May and August, and closes slightly earlier at other times of the year. As it receives so few visitors, you may have the place entirely to yourselves).

Roselle was an important Etruscan town, sited on a strong point overlooking the lake that covered the plain where Grosseto now stands. It was founded around the 7^th century BC. It was conquered by the Romans, however, in the 3^rd century BC and substantially rebuilt over the next few centuries, so most of the buildings visible today are Roman. The most visible Etruscan remains are the impressive 6^th century BC city wall, built of huge blocks of stone and extending to some 3 km. For “health and safety reasons”, it is not possible to walk round the wall, but it can be glimpsed from various points.

The town retained its importance into the early Middle Ages when it was the seat of a bishopric. But it was pillaged by the Saracens in 935, the bishopric moved to Grosseto in 1138 and the town was gradually abandoned. As so often, people from local villages removed much of the stone for their own building purposes. In the 19^th century, a British traveller in search of Etruscan remains, George Dennis, described it as “a wilderness of rocks and thickets – the haunt of the fox and the wild boar, of the serpent and lizard – visited by none but the herdsman or shepherd”.

Since then, it has been considerably tidied up by the archaeologists. None of the walls of the buildings is more than a few feet high. But the lay-out can still be clearly seen, as can the impressively paved streets. Quite a few broken Roman statues were found on the site. These are now in the museum in Grosseto, but rather hideous replicas, in Carrara marble, have been erected at random points around the site.

From the entrance, turn up to the left to the main part of the city. You can go along the modern path, but it is more romantic to go up the old roman road with its bumpy paving stones. At a certain point, the road (which was the decumanus maximus or main road through the city) passes a threshold into the central part of the city and the rough paving stones suddenly give way to large, smooth flagstones. The remains of shops can just about be made out beside the road.

There are panels with detailed (albeit not always easy to understand) descriptions of the various buildings, and a small map is also handed out at the entrance. At the top of the decumanus maximus, the cardo or main cross-road takes off to the left. It leads past the open space of the forum up to a residential quarter where some of the houses still have the remains of rather beautiful marble tiles on their floors. Originally their internal walls were covered in plaster (of which the odd vestige remains) and would have had wall paintings. Some excavations to the right of the forum have uncovered the remains of some of the pre-Roman Etruscan buildings (under cover).

Turning right from the top of the decumanus maximus, you come to an area of shops – probably the bond Street of Roselle. Further up the hill, the remains of a much earlier Etruscan house have been given a plastic roof. There is not much to see, but it excites the archaeologists because it is an extremely early form of what was to become the standard Roman house with an atrium open to the skies and an impluvium (shallow pool) in the middle to collect the rainwater. Beyond this there are the well-preserved remains of the Roman amphitheatre (1^st century AD) with walls of opus reticulatum – a well-known Roman building technique of placing square bricks diamond-wise (reticulatum means webbed).

On the way back down to the entrance, there are the remains of some Roman baths on the right. These are the only things on the site which can be dated, as an inscribed stone was found indicating that they were opened by Betitius Perpetuus Arzigya, the governor of Tuscia and Umbria from 366-370 AD. A path up from the right of the entrance leads to some mainly 6^th century BC Etruscan remains (tomb and hypogea).

2012