The Etruscan name of the city is not documented, but it likely did not differ much from the form Orcla, handed down from the early medieval forms. The settlement was located on the Clodia road and occupied a narrow plateau at the confluence of the Pile and Acqualta streams into the Biedano torrent. The only communication access to the city was used by a road, identified with the Roman Via Clodia, which crossed the hill in its entire length and crossed the Biedano with a three-arched bridge, now ruined. To then go up towards Tuscania, the Via Clodia was deeply cut into the tuffaceous walls of a place which – not coincidentally – is called Cava Buia. This road section, although of Roman age, still constitutes one of the most suggestive and unspoiled landscapes of the internal southern Etruria today. The oldest core of the Etruscan settlement was on the central part of the plateau and its peak period is dated between the late 4th century and the middle of the 2nd century BC. The current landscape of the Norchia plateau is dominated by the ruins of the medieval settlement, with the Pieve of San Pietro, the castle, and the watchtower. The fame of Norchia is strictly linked to the spectacular rock-cut necropolises that surround it, which show the display of wealth related to the social class of the agrarian aristocracy, which wanted to publicly distinguish itself. The variety of architectural types is extremely vast, the facade tombs are in two or three orders, arranged on steps partly natural, partly constructed, modifying the morphological appearance of the slopes of the plateaus. We highlight the Tomb of the Three Heads, the Prostila Tomb, the Ciarlanti Tomb, the Chimney Tomb, and the complex of the Smurinas Tombs on the Pile stream. Another monumental sector of the necropolis, behind the Biedano valley bottom, is the one hosting the Lattanzi Tomb, while the group of the spectacular Temple Tombs faces the Acqualta stream
Information about Rock-cut Necropolis of Norchia
S.S. 1 Aurelia bis, between Vetralla and Monte Romano,
63012 Vetralla (Viterbo)
https://www.provincia.vt.it/cultura/etruschi/homepage.html
Source: MIBACT
