Time Travel in Tuscany
Text and photos by Richard Dvořák (phpto)
To enlarge the images click on the icon at the right bottom.
This summer, Aischa Gianna Mueller — an Italy-based artist and scholar whose recent work “Choreographies of Unsettlement” explores the discrepancies between Earth’s irregular rotation and the precisely measured atomic time that underpins IT systems, two timescales that slowly drift apart — took us on a journey a few thousand years back into Etruscan times. The Etruscan civilization flourished from about the 9th century BCE until the late 1st century BCE, when Rome absorbed its lands and culture.
The “cities of tufa” — Sovana, Sorano, and Pitigliano — are built directly upon, and in many cases carved out of, volcanic tufa stone. These towns reveal layers of history where sacredness and daily life overlap, from the Etruscan period through medieval Christianity to the present day.