- Maria Paola Baglione –
is now possible to reconstruct more clearly the regular grid of the city blocks facing the
sea, and intended either for residential use or for the warehousing/storage of foodstuffs.
The Caere-Pyrgi road clearly marked the eastern boundary of this portion of the town
that was subdivided by the parallel paths of regular city streets that joined the great
thoroughfare to the sea.
The focus of the interest of Caere concentrates on the band to the south of the
settlement at the end of the sixth century bc, when a radical intervention has a
profound effect on the morphological character and on the organization of the territory
through the use of a monumental sacred area intended to become a major attraction
in the coastal landscape. In fact, since at least the middle of the century, in this sector
is indicated the presence of unidentifi ed sacred buildings to which belong fragments
of architectural terracottas of the fi rst phase that have been found in the course of
excavations; but the fi fty years between 510 and 470/460 bc is the period in which
the attention of the political power of Caere is concentrated in the basic restructuring
of the two sanctuaries that rose side by side along the coast, the famous monumental
sanctuary and the southern sanctuary, identifi ed in 1983, which is not more than 4000
square meters. In their maximum stage of development, the two sanctuaries will extend
over a frontage of more than 180 meters, covering an area of about 14,000 square
meters; the extension of the entire sacred area and its position in direct contact with the
sea are an absolute exception in Etruria and fi nd parallels only in the great sanctuary
complexes of Greece and Magna Graecia. The Greek and Latin sources, for whom port
and sanctuary were an indivisible system, ennobled the origins of this important place
of worship, making them go back to the mythical population of the Pelasgians, and
highlighting its great riches, the object of a sudden and disastrous raid conducted by
Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse in 384 bc, who robbed the sanctuary of the fabulous
sum of 1,500 talents of silver.
By the end of the sixth century bc, steps are taken in the great work of the parallel
restructuring of the two sanctuaries. The most challenging interventions are reserved
for the monumental sanctuary, which from now on will become a sort of manifesto of
Caeretan political propaganda directed to the outside world (Figure 30.4). The works
begin with the creation of a huge earthwork of clay to improve and raise the area, situated
at a lower level than the settlement; on the embankment Temple B will be raised by
digging a network of foundation trenches and employing blocks of red tuff extracted
from the quarries of Caere, which are transported to the building site, in the construction.
The construction of a monumental sacred building of the scope of Temple B requires a
high level of technical and organizational expertise; the building techniques adopted
in Etruria in the Late Archaic period involve not only walls of plastered tuff blocks but
also roofi ng with wooden structures and, above all, the installation of a complex system
of terracotta architectonic revetments to which was entrusted the dual responsibility of
protecting the structures and conveying the message chosen for the decorative program.
The plan adopted for Temple B was inspired by a Greek model, perhaps mediated
directly by familiarity with Campania: the temple, with façade facing the sea, has a
peripteral plan (18.64 x 28.41 m) with two rows of columns on the façade and a narrow
cella placed almost against the rear porch (Figure 30.5). The terracotta decoration of the
building represented an innovative creation of the Caeretan artisans who conceived of a
new homogeneous system comprising revetment plaques for the architraves and for the
slopes of the roofs surmounted by simas, and, on the fl anks, antefi xes with the head of a