Museo Archeologico Nazionale

dell' Umbria

Grave goods from Castel San Mariano

(6th century BC)

Reconstruction of the carpentum (ca. 570)
that was buried in a princely tomb at Castel San Mariano.
It was made in 2000 for an exhibition in Venice
from copper casts of all of the known surviving panels.


In 1812, a peasant accidentally discovered a spectacular cache of objects in what seems to have been a princely chamber tomb at Castel di San Mariano di Corciano, 15 km west of Perugia.   The exact location of the find spot is no longer known.  Some of the grave goods remained in Perugia while others were dispersed.  King Ludwig I of Bavaria bought some of them from the English antiquarian, Edward Dodwell, and these passed to in the Staatlichen Antikensammlungen, Munich.

The grave goods included a number of bronze reliefs.  Some of these had decorated wooden furniture, while others were all that survived of three vehicles:

  • a carpentum or woman's carriage (a reconstruction of which is illustrated above); and

While some of the reliefs used on furniture had been cast, all of those that came from these three vehicles were made by the more sophisticated  repoussé technique (i.e. by depressing the back of the metal). 

The owner of these prestige goods had clearly been a man of considerable standing.  There is no way of knowing whether he was Etruscan or Umbrian, but the goods with which he was buried came from Etruscan workshops and had been collected over a number of decades.

  • Three silver repoussé reliefs that also belonged to this tomb are now in the British Museum, London.

Figures from the Carpentum (ca. 570 BC)


Most of the surviving reliefs from the carpntum are in Berlin. Exhibited here are the winged goddesses from the front corners and other smaller figures.

Fragments from a Currus (ca. 550 BC)

These fragments came from a panel depicting contains the ninth labour of Hercules, in which he fought the Amazons in order to capture the girdle of Hippolyte.








Panels from a throne (ca. 550 BC)

These three panels depict female deities.

Panels from a Currus(ca. 530 BC)

Fragments from three panels from this chariot are exhibited here:

  • The front panel shows Peleus seizing the nereid Thetis, who tries to escape by turning herself into a lion.  From this union, Thetis would bear Achilles. 
  • The side panels show Zeus in the battle with the giants:
    • on the left, he holds a thunderbolt and seizes a giant by the hair; and
    • on the left, he welcomes his ally Hercules to Olympus.

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