The Etruscan town of Tarquinia (in Etruscan Tarch(u)na, in Latin Tarquinii), about 100 km from Rome, was situated on a hill overlooking the valley of the river Marta, the emissary of Lake Bolsena, which flows into the sea immediately north of the city.
The hill of the ancient town - the Pian di Civita - is located about 6 km from the seashore and it is separated from the coast by the long and parallel Monterozzi hill, site of the city's main historic necropolis where on the western spur there is the medieval (Corneto) and modern town.

The territory is now largely deforested because of the exploitation and the devastation due to millennia of human history. Great is the poetry of this land and deep is the emotion that gives the sequence of these large and barren hills.

Wide areas (Macchia della Turchina, della Fiorita, del Ritiro e della Roccaccia) are still covered by a rich and spontaneous vegetation typical of the Mediterranean horizon, residual of the forests which originally covered this first coastal hills. It's the same vegetation that appears in the tomb paintings: olive tree, laurel, ivy, vines and pomegranate.
The coastal plain, now intensely transformed by massive land reclamation projects, was once characterized by swampy and unhealthy places, whose only memory today is the beautiful corner of the salt ponds.