Florence [antikvár]

ETRUSCO-ROMAN PERIOD The ancient Etruscan cities were usually situated high up. On the top of a hill it was easier to defend oneself, and healthier to live in. Fiesole was a knot in the network of Etruscan roads which ran over Tuscany. It was reached by way of mountain roads which were the safest, even if very tiring. The hills of Fiesole förmed the last promontory of the woody Appennine chain. The Arno river, flowing from east to west, with its stream, and even more with its marshes, barred the way to whoever wanted to go from north to south. The crossing of the river, by flat-bottomed boát or bridge, was at all times possible at the point where the waters narrow, and that is the spot where the Ponté Vecchio still stands, at the foot of what are today called the Colli, a little above the meeting-point of the Mugnone torrent, which used to flow into the Arno where the Ponté Santa Trinita was later built. Downstream the marshes began again. From Fiesole groups of homes spread towards the river. And one of these, sprung up on the last slopes of the hills of Fiesole, had its cemetery where was later the cemetery of Florence: a cemetery which goes back to a thousand years before Christ, and from which have come a few ash-urns of the type used at Chiusi. Another nucleus ventured intp the marshy ground, forming a station on the river, and left a huge cemetery of terracotta ossuary vases, of the Villanova type. Etruscan sculpture: the so-calíed Chimera (Archaeological Museum).