In the City of the Dead

Veronica

“Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear -
Swift be thy flight!”
(Percy Bysshe Shelley)

To listen while reading 

The stones of the city of the dead rise from the earth, the necropolis where the Etrurian people rest, the first people of this region.

In each stone there are hollows that observe and whisper in the night.

All around are paths and vegetation where no one has the courage to venture when the light goes down.

 

City of the Dead

It's said that the three female presences that dominate those places come out from that land.

Giloya, the Black Queen, covered in white, never silent her song of the distance, wounded by a cold that torments her.

 

Giloya

Veronica, an Amazon imprisoned in a time that is not hers, forced to never die, capable of communicating with animals, her powerful horse and the inseparable barn owl.

 

Veronica

That Tyto Alba who has lived in the city of the dead for centuries, and their spokesman; for this reason, always feared and hunted, like a white nocturnal ghost, “owl of the devil”, incarnation of witches.

 

And, lastly, Amelia, a young princess of the cold realms and with lake eyes, tormented by the spirits who chase her and would like to bring her back to the snow lands where she comes from.

 

Amelia

No human eye has ever been able to see them in those places, but their singing and crying in the night is legendary.

There are those who swear they saw shreds of Amelia's cloak among the shrubs, or Veronica's barn owl motionless in the branches in the night, as well as Giloya's deep voice echoing through the tunnels and caves of the city of the dead.

 

It's said that when they appear in the night, flocks of birds break free in the sky.

 

The elders of the city say they have always existed, and their history has been handed down for generations.

It seems that some daring ones have asked the deceased for their intercession, and by placing their ears on the holes in the stones, the voice of the ancestors has come.

It was enough to follow the flight of the barn owl and listen to the stones on which the messenger of the night flapped his wings.

 

Nobody knows if they will ever find peace.

Or, for the centuries, as it was in ancient age, they will remain to protect these sacred places. Each with own obsessions and wounds.

Who, with singing, trying to approach a warm and distant land.

 

Who, forced to wander in a time that does not belong to her, in a solitude broken only by the warmth of her beloved animals.

 

Who, running relentlessly, escapes from the spirits of snow-covered lands and their enticements.

 

 

Middle Ages of the soul, “media aetas” or “media tempestas”, middle land between the souls of the living and the dead, confined to stones.

So the three women wander, each other's only comfort.

 

Bridge between two dimensions of existence, reminding us that the sacredness of certain symbols must be respected, be they stone, feathers or a woman's body.

“I live all the daytime
In faith and in might
And in holy fire
I die every night.”
(Novalis, “Hymns to the Night”)

Sutri, timeless...

 

Everything I have written is just a fantasy game, enchanted by the beauty of this magical place, following the suggestions of the waning and cold light, as in a gothic poem, and by the costumes of my friends

Which are absolutely not witches.

But, as you have already known, Giloya is a dear and talented singer friend of mine from Angola.

Veronica is a girl passionate about horses and birds of prey, in love with the medieval period, which she pays homage with historical re-enactments.

Amelia is a very young girl who has just arrived in Italy two months ago, from the Polish city of Kudowa-Zdrój, in the district of Kłodzko in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. In love with horses since she was only six, she made it her profession.

 

A special thanks goes to my two models: 

the splendid maremma horse Valanga (Avalanche), and the barn owl Mirtilla (Blueberry) – thanks for your patience.

 

The photographs were taken in the enchanting city of Sutri, in the Viterbo area, on November 27, 2020.

From Wikipedia:
The Etruscan civilization of ancient Italy covered a territory, at its greatest extent, of roughly what is now Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio, as well as parts of what are now the Po Valley, Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy, southern Veneto, and Campania.
The earliest evidence of a culture that is identifiably Etruscan dates from about 900 BCE. This is the period of the Iron Age Villanovan culture, considered to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization, which itself developed from the previous late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture in the same region. Etruscan civilization endured until it was assimilated into Roman society. Assimilation began in the late 4th century BC as a result of the Roman–Etruscan Wars; it accelerated with the grant of Roman citizenship in 90 BC, and became complete in 27 BC, when the Etruscans' territory was incorporated into the newly established Roman Empire.
Etruscan culture was influenced by Ancient Greek culture, beginning around 750 BC, during the last phase of the Villanovan period, when the Greeks, who were at this time in their Archaic Orientalizing period, started founding colonies in southern Italy. Greek influence also occurred in the 4th and 5th centuries BC during Greece's Classical period.
The territorial extent of Etruscan civilization reached its maximum around 750 BC, during the foundational period of the Roman Kingdom. Its culture flourished in three confederacies of cities: that of Etruria (Tuscany, Latium and Umbria), that of the Po Valley with the eastern Alps, and that of Campania. The league in northern Italy is mentioned in Livy. The reduction in Etruscan territory was gradual, but after 500 BC, the political balance of power on the Italian peninsula shifted away from the Etruscans in favor of the rising Roman Republic.

A necropolis is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek νεκρόπολις nekropolis, literally meaning “city of the dead”.
The term usually implies a separate burial site at a distance from a city, as opposed to tombs within cities, which were common in various places and periods of history. They are different from grave fields, which did not have structures or markers above the ground. While the word is most commonly used for ancient sites, the name was revived in the early 19th century and applied to planned city cemeteries, such as the Glasgow Necropolis.
The Etruscans took the concept of a “city of the dead” quite literally. The typical tomb at the Banditaccia necropolis at Cerveteri consists of a tumulus which covers one or more rock-cut subterranean tombs. These tombs had multiple chambers and were elaborately decorated like contemporary houses. The arrangement of the tumuli in a grid of streets gave it an appearance similar to the cities of the living. The art historian Nigel Spivey considers the name cemetery inadequate and argues that only the term necropolis can do justice to these sophisticated burial sites. Etruscan necropoleis were usually located on hills or slopes of hills.

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the late 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.
The concept of the Middle Ages appears for the first time in the 15th century, with the Latin terms media aetas or media tempestas, with the meaning of “middle age”, reflecting the feeling of contemporaries, for which this period would have represented a deviation from the culture classical, in opposition to the later Humanism and Renaissance.

Sutri (Latin Sutrium) is an Ancient town, modern comune and former bishopric (now a Latin titular see) in the province of Viterbo, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from Rome and about 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of Viterbo. It is picturesquely situated on a narrow tuff hill, surrounded by ravines, a narrow neck on the west alone connecting it with the surrounding country.
The modern comune of Sutri has a few more than 5,000 inhabitants. Its ancient remains are a major draw for tourism: A Roman amphitheater excavated in the tuff rock, an Etruscan necropolis with dozens of rock-cut tombs, a Mithraeum incorporated in the crypt of its church of the Madonna del Parto, a Romanesque Duomo.
Ancient Sutrium occupied an important position, commanding as it did the road into Etruria, the later Via Cassia: Livy describes it as one of the keys of Etruria, nearby Nepi being the other. It came into the hands of Rome after the fall of Veii, and a Latin colony was founded there; it was lost again in 386 BC, but was recovered and recolonized around 383 BC. It was besieged by the Etruscans in 311–310 BC, but not taken. With Nepi and ten other Latin colonies it refused further help in the Second Punic War in 209 BC. Its importance as a fortress explains, according to Festus, the proverb Sutrium ire, of one who goes on important business, as it occurs in Plautus. It is mentioned in. the war of 41 BC, and received a colony of veterans under the triumviri (Colonia coniuncta lulia Sutrina). Inscriptions show that it was a place of some importance under the empire, and it is mentioned as occupied by the Lombards.

READ ALSO:

• The Voice of Colors – Part One  
• The Voice of Colors – Part Two 

 

Italian version