3-011-919 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"City of Chiusi, Etruria", by T. M. Richardson, from the exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1864. Engraving of a painting. 'Away from the high road between Rome and Siena, and therefore seldom visited by the modern traveller, the city of Chiusi stands on the site of the ancient Clusium, one of the twelve cities of the Etruscan League, once the most important political capital in Etruria...Clusium is also memorable for the marvellous accounts in the pages of Pliny and Varro of the mausoleum and labyrinth of Porsena. The town is now literally undermined by subterranean passages; and although some of them were possibly connected with the sewerage of the ancient city, there are many others the purposes of which are still a mystery...It will be seen by our Engraving that Chiusi is most picturesquely situated on an acropolis-like eminence (the road to which is a long and steep ascent), and that it overlooks a small but beautiful lake, to which the city gives its name of Lago di Chiusi'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.