Rusellae Archaeological Site: An Etruscan and Roman City in Italy
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Iron Age, Classical, Medieval
- Civilizations
- Etruscan, Roman
- Site type
- City
On this page33 sections
History
Rusellae Archaeological Site in Italy preserves the remains of an Etruscan city established on two hills beside ancient Lake Prile, near the meeting point of the Ombrone Valley and the Maremma. Settlement began by the second half of the eighth century BC, while the city was founded or developed in the seventh century BC within the wider Etruscan urban tradition.
An Etruscan city beside Lake Prile
Known as Rusel in the Etruscan language, Rusellae was connected with the Etruscan Dodecapoli, the traditional grouping of twelve major Etruscan city-states, although its formal membership remains uncertain. Its position between Vetulonia, Volterra, Arezzo, and Chiusi placed it at a crossroads between northern and southern Etruria. The Ombrone and Lake Prile supported movement and commercial contacts with inland cities, Greece, and the Greek colonies of southern Italy.
The city grew at the expense of neighboring Etruscan centers, particularly Vetulonia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian of the late first century BC, included Roselle among the cities that assisted the Latins during their war against Tarquinius Priscus, an early king of Rome. This reference places the city within the political struggles that connected Etruscan communities and the emerging Roman power.
The Etruscan settlement was enclosed by a substantial wall circuit during the sixth century BC. Its position on two hills and its control of routes beside the lake gave it a defensive and strategic role. Excavated houses, sacred buildings, roads, workshops, and cemeteries show the development of an organized urban community from the early Iron Age and Orientalizing period into the Archaic age. The Orientalizing period was a phase when Etruscan elites adopted artistic forms and luxury goods influenced by the eastern Mediterranean.
Roman conquest and urban expansion
Rome captured Rusellae in 294 BC. The city subsequently became a municipium, a Roman community incorporated into the state while retaining a measure of local administration, and later a colony between the triumviral period and the reign of Augustus. The Lex Iulia of 90 BC granted Roman citizenship to its inhabitants. The city reached its greatest prosperity during the first and second centuries AD, when public buildings, commercial facilities, bathing complexes, and the forum were enlarged and monumentalized.
Rusellae remained linked to its surrounding territory through the Ombrone and the Via Aurelia. In 205 BC, it supplied grain and timber for the fleet of Scipio Africanus, the Roman general. Under the Empire, a public aqueduct, commercial buildings, and several bath complexes reflected the city’s continuing urban development. The forum was enlarged during the Augustan and Julio-Claudian periods, and buildings connected with the imperial cult expressed the city’s place within Roman political culture.
Roman occupation also transformed earlier Etruscan spaces. Houses were demolished or incorporated into new public terraces, while older sacred and civic buildings continued to influence the arrangement of the forum. The Domus of the Mosaics developed from a late Republican residence into a large complex with baths that eventually took on a public character. The northern quarter preserves houses damaged during the civil wars of the early first century BC and later restored for residential use.
Late antique, Byzantine, and medieval Roselle
From the end of the sixth century, Rusellae became one of the Byzantine strongholds of Tuscia. It later came under Lombard control and formed part of the Duchy of Lucca. Its location remained important for control of the coast, Lake Prile, coastal roads, and routes leading toward Chiusi and Rome.
A bishopric existed at Roselle by at least 499. A bishopric was a Christian administrative district governed by a bishop. The city continued to function under Lombard and later rule, and a document of 715 refers to the administrative district of the fines rosellanos. Episcopal succession is recorded from the seventh to the ninth century.
Roselle ceased to function as a city when its episcopal see and the title of civitas were transferred to Grosseto by a decree of Pope Innocent II dated 9 April 1138. After the transfer, stable urban occupation declined, although the place remained recognizable through its name, imposing walls, and amphitheater. Parts of the settlement continued to be used intermittently into the later Middle Ages and early modern period.
The late antique and medieval phases left Christian churches, burials, defensive structures, and reused Roman materials. A cathedral associated with the Roselle canonry stood outside the walls at Poggio Mosconcino, while the earlier urban basilica continued to shape the cemetery and religious history of the site. The Roman amphitheater was enclosed by defensive walls in the early Middle Ages, and later pottery demonstrates occupation there from at least the fourteenth century.
Excavation and archaeological preservation
Modern investigation began with the exposure of the amphitheater by Canon Boldrini in 1774. In 1775, Father Leonardo Ximenes prepared plans of the amphitheater and the walls. Nineteenth-century work concentrated on suburban cemeteries, while a proposed urban excavation project by Gian Francesco Gamurrini in 1876 was not carried out.
Forest clearance and emergency work in the 1930s revealed the large northern baths. Antonio Minto resumed investigation in 1942 for the Institute of Etruscan Studies, but wartime events soon interrupted the work. In 1957 and 1958, the German Archaeological Institute examined sections of the walls and the southern temple terrace under Rudolf Naumann and Friedrich Hiller.
Systematic excavation began in 1959 under the Florentine archaeological authority. Clelia Laviosa directed the campaign for many years, investigating the valley between the hills, the northern hill and amphitheater, and the Hellenistic quarter on the southern hill. The Museum of Archaeology and Art of the Maremma excavated the baths and cathedral between 1987 and 1991.
Between 1980 and 1996, restoration, fencing, museum preparation, and work on the walls helped preserve the archaeological area and made much of the wall circuit accessible for public visits. Excavation remains incomplete, and the investigated area represents only a small part of the ancient city. Since 2007, non-invasive survey and lidar investigation through 2025 have identified 181 features associated with burials and approximately 750 archaeological features across about 550 hectares around Roselle and Poggio di Moscona. Ninety-three of the latter were interpreted as tombs, and 75 were verified in the field.
The site is administered as a publicly visitable archaeological park by the Italian Ministry of Culture’s regional museums authority. Its preservation is especially important because an extensive Etruscan and Roman urban settlement survived without being covered by modern housing.
Remains
The archaeological area occupies approximately 45 hectares on the two hills of Poggio di Mota, overlooking the former Lake Prile. Only a small remnant of the lake survives in the Diaccia Botrona Nature Reserve. The excavated urban area contains Etruscan, Roman, early Christian, and medieval remains organized around the hills, the valley between them, and roads leading beyond the city.
Walls, gates, and urban defenses
Etruscan wall circuit
The Etruscan city was enclosed by a wall circuit about 3,170 metres long and approximately seven metres high on average. Built mainly during the sixth century BC, it uses irregular polygonal masonry laid without mortar on prepared bedrock. A single outer facing contains a rubble-and-limestone core, while the arrangement follows an artificial break of slope around both hills.
Local geology determined the materials. Cavernous limestone predominates in the northern sector, while compact gray limestone blocks from the northern hill were used in the southeast. Sandstone sections on the eastern and western sides belong to later repairs. Quarry faces remain visible inside the circuit, linking the defenses with the extraction of local building stone.
Gates and later repairs
The number of gates remains uncertain, with evidence and interpretations ranging from six to at least seven. A northern gate exposed during the German excavations was later reburied. Its internal passage measured 2.25 by 5.50 metres and included two drainage channels. The entrance was placed laterally, a form known as a sceo-type entrance. A low northern postern probably discharged water.
The western wall collapsed on a steep slope and was rebuilt during the Middle Hellenistic period with medium-sized limestone blocks laid over the earlier landslide. A large rectangular sewer with a roof made from alberese slabs served the earlier structure. Roman additions included projecting supports that strengthened the forum embankment. Later blocking reused bricks and thresholds removed from imperial buildings.
Forum and civic buildings
Etruscan civic and sacred buildings
The forum occupied the valley between the hills, facing the plain formerly covered by Lake Prile. Beneath the Roman paving were two successive Etruscan buildings with probable public or sacred functions. The earlier House with Enclosure dates to the Middle Orientalizing period. Built of mud brick and probably roofed with thatch, it had a circular interior about 4.50 metres in diameter within a rectangular structure and stood inside an enclosure measuring 26 by 7.50 metres.
Domestic pottery, a hearth, a vessel bearing a gift inscription, loom weights, a fragment of a Protocorinthian cup, a bucchero ladle possibly from Caere, and an inscription reading aiser, meaning “gods,” were found in connection with the building. Its function has been interpreted as a chiefly residence, a public and sacred building, or a meeting place, but no single interpretation is secure. The building remained in use throughout the sixth century BC. A late seventh-century BC House with Two Rooms cut through one side of the enclosure and may have taken over its function.
The northern part of the forum also preserves the greatly reduced podium of a temple founded in the Etruscan period and still used during Roman rule. These remains lie beneath the later civic complex, where the city’s public spaces were repeatedly altered without losing their earlier central position.
Roman forum and basilicas
The Roman forum was paved with stone slabs, and shops lined the principal Etruscan route that continued in use under Rome. The eastern side contained the Civil Basilica, while the northern side held the Basilica of the Bassi. During the Augustan and Julio-Claudian periods, the square was enlarged and regularized, with land taken from neighboring houses.
The remodeled forum acquired porticoes, a new terrace for a basilica, and the Augusteum, a shrine associated with the imperial cult. The Augusteum received numerous statues dedicated to members of the imperial family. After a Claudian rebuilding, it gained an apse and further statues. During the Flavian period, the western portico was completed and the square received limestone paving.
The northern Republican basilica was remodeled with an additional room and a renewed facade. In the first half of the second century AD, the Basilica of the Bassi received a marble-clad Aula of Bassus. Its portrait cycle followed Julio-Claudian models and appears to have glorified a prominent local family.
Later forum structures
A rectangular two-room building at the northeastern corner of the forum was constructed in mixed brick and reticulate masonry during the Trajanic or Hadrianic period. Its elevated position and probable staircase connection with the forum support a possible temple interpretation, although its function cannot be established securely.
South of the forum, near the Domus of the Mosaics, stood another Augusteum or temple of the Augustales. Built in the first century AD, it was associated with sculptures representing the family of Augustus and Claudius. A proposal that it later became a church dedicated to Saint Sylvester remains uncertain. The surviving semicircular wall is more likely an improvised structure built after the area had fallen out of use.
Domestic quarters and industrial reuse
Domus of the Mosaics
The Domus of the Mosaics began in the late Republican period, after the extensive destruction of Rusellae around 90 to 80 BC. Its original plan followed the axial arrangement of an Italic house, with a tablinum, the principal reception room, a columned peristyle, and rooms arranged around it. Early in the first century BC, the plan was more regular than the surviving remains suggest. Later partitions accompanied the installation of a bath complex.
During the reign of Tiberius, the house was enlarged, restored, and decorated with statues of the imperial family. Room 20 contained an opus sectile pavement made from fitted pieces of stone or marble, while room 9 had a mosaic. During the Claudian period, a partial destruction, possibly caused by fire, was followed by immediate restoration. Baths were installed in the southern half at about the same time or shortly beforehand, and their unusually large scale made the building a public facility rather than an ordinary private residence.
In the late Hadrianic or Antonine period, the baths and their annexes were raised and enlarged. Mosaics were installed in the bathing rooms and the tablinum. The peristyle columns and fountain were altered, and the small sweating room received stucco decoration in low and high relief.
Workshop and later burials
Between the late third century and the early fifth century, ruined residential rooms in the Domus of the Mosaics housed a metalworking workshop, probably operated by a smith. Ash, charcoal-rich soil, slag, and blackened floors indicate metallurgical activity. Bronze and other metal objects suggest that the workshop mainly melted and recycled older material from Etruscan tombs and Roman public and private buildings.
Infant burials were placed above the collapsed levels of the house during the sixth century. Near the forum, poorly preserved dry-stone structures of uncertain function date from the sixth or seventh century.
Northern residential quarter
The northern residential quarter preserves occupation from the late Orientalizing period through the Middle Ages. Houses established shortly after the Roman conquest in 294 BC were abandoned during the civil wars at the beginning of the first century BC, apparently following destruction associated with the Sullan repression, and were later restored for residential use.
Fragments of painted plaster from this quarter were reassembled into a panel measuring approximately 90 by 76 centimetres. It shows an arched window opening onto an illusionistic garden with marble railings, a basket of cherries, a round cake covered with cherries, a peahen feeding a chick, a pigeon pecking fruit, and a turtledove. The combination of garden painting, still-life elements, and architectural illusionism has been interpreted as an early or provincial form of the genre. Its quality suggests high-status patronage and models from Latium and Campania.
House of the Impluvium
The House of the Impluvium on the northern slope dates to the second half of the sixth century BC and is one of the few completely known Archaic Etruscan houses. An impluvium is a shallow basin in a central court that collected rainwater through an opening in the roof. The house had a quadrangular plan organized around an open court, with a rectangular basin connected to a cistern supplied by a well.
The house stood among terraces probably used for agriculture. Its water and food arrangements reflect an urban setting in which individual buildings could maintain a degree of self-sufficiency. The area contains three successive occupation phases extending from the late Villanovan period, the early Iron Age culture that contributed to Etruscan society, to the early fifth century BC.
Southern hill and temple terrace
Retaining system and cult area
The southern temple terrace occupies an elevated position near a city gate. Its principal east-west retaining wall, built of polygonal sandstone blocks, is approximately 2.7 metres thick. A parallel counterscarp wall about 2.2 metres thick is connected to it by transverse braces, creating four internal chambers. The braces were added around 450 to 400 BC, while a proposed sixth-century date for the earliest structure remains unconfirmed by stratigraphy.
The terrace has been associated with a cult building dedicated to Artumes, the Etruscan counterpart of Artemis, a deity principally associated with hunting and the wilderness. Two graffiti dedications beneath the feet of Attic cups identify the local cult. One reads artmsl on a red-figure cup attributed to the Marlay Painter, and the other reads artamasal on a mid-fifth-century BC Attic cup.
Architectural terracottas and summit buildings
Architectural terracottas from the terrace span the first half of the sixth century BC through the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The group includes a female-head roof ornament without a halo, plaques with palmette and lotus-flower designs, a pierced cornice, a decorated frieze, and an eaves tile. Two workshops may have operated at Roselle around 500 BC, one using archaizing forms and another using more current vegetal decoration.
Near the terrace are the so-called artisan quarter, Etruscan and Roman buildings with ceramic kilns, and large Roman cisterns. The summit also preserves the remains of a medieval tower of uncertain date. The southern hill contains a large summit cistern and additional cisterns associated with the Domus of the Mosaics, although the exact functions of those installations are uncertain because of the later baths and peristyle fountain.
Amphitheater and northern baths
Roman amphitheater
The amphitheater was built on the summit of the northern hill during the first century AD in opus reticulatum, a Roman technique using small diamond-shaped masonry blocks. It replaced or covered a pre-existing Hellenistic house. Earth removed to create the arena was probably reused to form the foundation of the upper seating banks. The elliptical structure measures about 38 metres along its major axis and 27 metres along its minor axis.
The east-west entrances were open and bounded by long walls with small cross-vaulted rooms beside them. Shorter walls flanked the north-south entrances, which were covered by barrel vaults. Four regularly spaced stones with holes along the major axis of the arena probably supported divisions used for theatrical scenery. Arretine sealed pottery confirms the building’s early first-century AD date.
The amphitheater probably ceased to function for games by the end of the second century AD. Coins found in the area range from the reign of Caligula, including an issue of AD 39 to 40, to the reign of Diocletian, including an issue of AD 295 to 299. Intermediate coins belong to the reigns of Domitian, Gordian III, and Philip I.
In the early Middle Ages, reused Roman materials formed defensive walls around the amphitheater. The structure may have become a Byzantine castrum, a fortified enclosure or military settlement used against the Lombards, although the limited stratigraphic evidence does not establish that identification. Archaic maiolica and glazed and enameled ceramics demonstrate later occupation from at least the fourteenth century.
Hadrianic Baths
The northern thermal complex, often called the Hadrianic Baths, was built during the first quarter of the second century AD after earlier houses were expropriated and demolished. Its date is supported by construction technique, mosaic types, and brick stamps. Imperial patronage is plausible but has not been confirmed by an inscription.
The baths occupied a rectangular area approximately 48 by 52 metres, divided into two blocks at right angles. Their concrete walls were faced with local limestone reticulate masonry, reinforced with brick at the corners and in horizontal courses. The foundations were cast in formwork.
The non-bathing block contained an entrance portico, a vestibule, an inner courtyard, a deep three-stepped basin interpreted either as a swimming pool or water reservoir, and a latrine. The bathing block held a frigidarium, or cold room, with a basin ending in two apses, as well as warm, sweating, and hot rooms. The hot room had two basins. Lost black-and-white marine mosaics and several marble pilaster capitals are associated with the complex, while the capitals are now in the Museum of Archaeology and Art of the Maremma.
The Hadrianic Baths were abandoned during the fourth century AD, when another public bath complex was built farther downhill. Emergency work exposed them in the 1930s, followed by investigation in 1942 and 1943. They were restored in 1970 and examined again between 1987 and 1991.
Late antique and medieval religious buildings
Late antique baths
A smaller late antique bath complex was built near the eastern gate through the generosity of Betitius Perpetuus Arzygius, consularis of Tuscia et Umbria from 366. A reused dedicatory inscription preserves the memory of this benefaction. The building is the only known newly constructed building at late antique Roselle.
Early Christian basilica and cemetery
The early Christian basilica was built in the late sixth or very early seventh century within the ruined and stripped non-bathing sector of the earlier baths. It had three aisles and a baptismal font. Roman walls formed its foundations, while the facade was newly built. The church is probably Roselle’s earliest cathedral, the Sancta Rosellana Ecclesia dedicated to Saint Lawrence, although that identification remains debated.
A stele of Archaic Etruscan date and 26 Roman inscriptions came from the basilica and its cemetery. Stratigraphic and ceramic evidence places the building in the later sixth or earliest seventh century, rather than the fifth century.
A Christian cemetery developed around the basilica, especially on the northwestern slope and in front of the facade. Approximately 170 burials date from the late sixth through the seventh century, and the cemetery remained in use until the twelfth or thirteenth century. An eighth-century refurbishment added chancel screens and posts. A dedicatory screen slab naming the master builder Iohannes is now reused in a rural wall. Around the eleventh century, a substantial tower accessible only from inside the church was added to the facade.
Romanesque cathedral at La Canonica
Outside the walls at Poggio Mosconcino, in the locality of La Canonica, stand the remains of the Romanesque cathedral associated with the Roselle canonry. The church had three aisles, a transept, a semicircular apse, and a square-section bell tower on the right. The adjoining canonry served as the bishop’s residence before the episcopal see moved to Grosseto.
After the transfer, the church continued to serve parish functions until the transition from the later Middle Ages to the early Renaissance. Etruscan and Roman tombs were found in the surrounding area.
Water management and roads
Republican houses collected rainwater from their roofs and stored it in cisterns. During the first century AD, possibly as early as the Julio-Claudian period, a public aqueduct supplied the city. Lead pipes stamped pub(licum) Col(oniae) Rus(ellanorum) supplied the forum fountain and a second basin along the eastern road, and probably also fed the Hadrianic Baths.
The southern hill has a large summit cistern and other cisterns associated with the Domus of the Mosaics. Along the Salica valley west of the city, a major access road expands from about six metres wide at a distance of 1.5 kilometres from the urban area to about 14 metres near the city. More than 30 circular features beside the road measure approximately 14 to 43 metres across and are consistent with Etruscan funerary mounds.
Cemeteries, burials, and coins
Etruscan tombs and Sassi Grossi
Etruscan burials lay outside the walls, mainly beside roads leading from the gates toward neighboring centers. At Sassi Grossi, accidental finds in 2003 led to the excavation in 2004 of two seventh-century BC shaft graves, probably enclosed within a large stone circle.
The grave goods include bronze, iron, silver, and gold insignia, weapons, metal vessels, equipment for banquets and drinking, ornaments, pottery, a chariot in one grave, and a cart in the other. Notable objects include a Kurd-type bronze vessel and a censer with a handle shaped as a master of horses. These burials form an important seventh-century BC funerary context in the Roselle area. Their publication, begun in 2018, renewed discussion of the city’s earliest phases. The exhibition title “Rex Rusellarum” was deliberately emphatic and does not establish that the deceased possessed defined political or institutional powers.
Christian cemetery burial
A late seventh-century burial in the Christian cemetery is the only male burial with weapons so far identified at the site. It contained a langsax and a belt with iron fittings inlaid with silver and bronze. Comparable fittings suggest a shared production center with examples from Chiusi, Fiesole, Pisa, and Marlia.
Coin circulation
Coins from excavated and surveyed areas range from probable aes rude, irregular pieces of metal used before coinage and especially common in Etruria between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, to Constantinian nummi of AD 327 to 335. Etruscan issues include four silver coins from Populonia, one or two bronze coins from Vetulonia, and two third-century BC silver five-unit coins found close together in 2014. Their attribution to a particular mint remains possible but uncertain.
Republican finds include bronze coins of the Janus-and-prow series, including a restruck sextans, and two silver victoriati, one of them plated. The unusually high proportion of counterfeit coins suggests that some were discarded after their falsification was detected.
An imperial bronze coin struck at Nemausus, modern Nimes, from 28 to 27 BC onward bears the paired portraits of Octavian, the future emperor Augustus, and Agrippa. Its reverse shows a crocodile chained to a palm tree. Its discovery at Roselle indicates secondary circulation, perhaps through soldiers or merchants.
