Audioguía 5_Castelsecco_en

CASTELSECCO

The hill of Castelsecco rises in front of the hill of San Donato, about three kilometers south-east of the city, at 424 m. above sea level.

The area was home to an important monumental complex built in the second century B.C., consisting of two temples and a theater erected on a large terrace, supported by a colossal wall with buttresses.

From the hill it dominates one of the main communication routes between the Arno and Chiana valleys on one side, the Tiber valley and the Umbrian territory on the other. The whole, clearly visible from the ancient city, was a formidable point of control of the territory; considered in the past from time to time the seat of the oldest nucleus of Arezzo, of the acropolis of the city, of Roman buildings, of the allocation of the Roman legions, in the second half of the nineteenth century it was the subject of excavations and investigations by Vincenzo Funghini, who documented the structures and illustrated the materials found.

After short essays carried out in the 60s of the last century, we owe to Guglielmo Maetzke in the mid-70s, with further insights in 1983-84, the systematic exploration of the area and the first correct interpretation of the site from an archaeological point of view.

The hill was frequented since the archaic period but it is only in the second century B.C. that it became the subject of a major renovation, with the construction of the large extra-urban sanctuary complex in direct contact with the city community, placed in control of the countryside and the most important traffic routes.

The combination of Templar and entertainement buildings attests to cultural contacts with the mid-Italian area and testifies the vitality and importance of the role of Arezzo in the panorama of northern Etruria.

THE SANCTUARY

In the northern sector of the area rises a large spur of rock regularized at the top and landfilled on the eastern side, identifiable as the platform on which a Templar building was supposed to rise, of which very few traces remain.

A slightly lower but wider rise, parallel, located to the East, suggests the probable presence of a second building of worship.

The discovery of terracotta votive offerings representing children in swaddling clothes attests to the presence of the cult of a female deity linked to fertility and maternity protection.

From the area also come two stone slabs with the inscriptions "tinś lut" and "flere" in Etruscan letters.

The first term indicates a consecrated area dedicated to Tinia (Zeus for the Greeks) or, if understood as a single word, generically "sacred area", while "flere" means "god" and indicates an unnamed deity, perhaps the owner of the sanctuary.

These two tiles were to be part of a delimited and consecrated area within the imposing sanctuary, which could perhaps be interpreted as an auguraculum, a place placed high from where it was possible to observe the signs of the sky, such as lightning and the flight of birds, a fundamental aspect of The Etruscan religious discipline.