The use to decorate the burial chambers with paintings is documented in numerous Etrurian centres, but only in Tarquinia the phenomenon is so important and continue in time. In fact it's attested from the 7th to the 2nd centuries BC, that is for almost the entire city life.
The painted burials are a small part (about 2%) of the Tarquinia tombs: they are, as a matter of fact, an expression of the aristocracy of the time, which alone could afford to decorate the graves.
The oldest painted tombs (late 7th-first half of the 6th centuries BC), destined to the burial of the married couple, are small rectangular rooms with a gabled ceiling and coloured bands that emphasize the architectural elements. The rooms, carved into the rock at varying depths, are accessible through long descending corridors (dromoi) with steps.

From the mid-sixth century BC prevails the use of a figurative decoration, limited to the pediments of the short walls, with opposing animals in a heraldic composition at the sides of a central pillar.
Around 530 BC the paintings now cover all the walls of the room with figurative scenes that allude to the life and death of the aristocratic class of the time: hunts, banquets entertained by music and dances, komos (orgiastic dance where the participants play music, drink and get drunk), funerary celebrations with gymnastic and gladiatorial games in honour of the deceased. The room is often thought as the tent under which the body of the dead was exposed and around which the funerary rituals took place.

The nature of the representations, with scenes related to real life, reflects a serene and primitive conception of death, according to which the deceased survives where his remains are buried. The style of these oldest paintings denounces the presence, among the tomb decorators of Tarquinia, of foreigner painters, especially east-Greek artists coming from Anatolian Ionia (Asia Minor). The discovery in the Gravisca harbour of samples of minerals known to be used as colouring materials in the tombs, confirms the role that these foreign artists had in the elaboration of the decorative patterns in the painted tombs.

During the 5th century BC, the heavy socio-economic crisis that strikes Etruria will cause in Tarquinia a sharp decline and a stylistic impoverishment of the frescoed tombs: the banqueting scenes have now become the almost unique decorative theme. In the tombs of the second half of the 5th century, however, are already appearing the first signs of the new underworld conception of the Hellenistic type with references to a supernatural world: next to the first representations of netherworld characters (winged genii and demons) are the oldest descriptions of the journey of the deceased towards the eternal life.
At the beginning of the next century the city is experiencing a new phase of splendour and there is a consequent new flourishing of painted tombs. The profound mutations that in the meantime, however, have changed the city's social context are of course also reflected in the architecture and decoration of the aristocratic graves. The tombs become magnificent rooms for the burial of the entire noble clan and in the paintings the new afterlife beliefs, that were strengthened under the influence of the Greek world, are now explicit: the figurative scenes are now taking place in an underworld setting with the presence of demons of death.
Next to the aristocratic tombs, that are continuing the decorative tradition of the Archaic and Classical ages, are also standing tombs with a decoration partially painted and poor in quality, belonging to the new noble ranks of recent origin and limited economic capacity.
The number of frescoed tombs decreases when Tarquinia joins the Roman political orbit: at the end of the 3rd century BC and at the beginning of the 2nd we can count only few examples

(from M. Cataldi, Tarquinia, Regione Lazio 1993)