La Castellina del Marangone (english)

The Castellina of Marangone The latest example of an Etruscan fortress along the Tyrrhenian Sea by Glauco Stracci - SSC In the municipality of Santa Marinella, south of the place "Puntone della Molaccia", where there was an old mill, on a hill called "La Castellina" adjacent to the “Marangone ditch”, it stood an ancient fortified Etruscan settlement (pagus). The village, built on antecedent “castelliera” Bronze Age (facies protovillanovian), was surrounded by walls built with “Macigno” stone blocks (Pietraforte) and sandstone. The latter known locally as “Scaglia”, came from the place "Frasca" of Civitavecchia city. The ancient wall, which was originally four meters high and reinforced by palisades, surrounded the hill for a perimeter of about 700 meters. Excavations by the late nineteenth century to the present day, have shown that the pagus was built around the 750 BC (Orientalising period ) and lasting until the third century BC, when during the Romanization of the Etruria, was founded on the nearby Roman colony of the Castrum Novum in 264 BC, perhaps so called in reference to the Etruscan Castrum Vetus of “La Castellina”. The settlement dominated the entire valley to the sea and an ancient road connecting it to “Marangone ditch”, where perhaps there was a small port that served as intermediary with maritime commercial traffic, between the Greeks-Phoenicians and mineral wealth of interior of the Tolfa Mountains, which at the time belonged to the territory of the Etruscan city of Caere. Many were the findings that bear witness to these exchanges, as some balsam Phoenicians in Egyptian faience style (depicting the goddess Heket ) and Greek ceramics from Pithecusa (Ischia). Adjoining Etruscan acropolis there was a cemetery of about 120 graves, spread over about 200 hectares, these were tumuli even with diameters of 45 meters, underground chamber and dresser. All the tombs were built with dry stone blocks of the previously mentioned type. On “Castellina”, now abandoned, it was later implanted a great rustic Roman villa, whose tanker, built with dry stone blocks, to collect rain water, is more than 70000 liters, thus remaining the most voluminous by type of Lazio. The finds of the archaeological excavations of “Castellina of Marangone”, made between the 30’s and 70’s respectively by Salvatore Bastianelli and Odoardo Toti, are currently on display at the National Museum of Civitavecchia.