7 Inside the Hill: the Containment Spurs

The cultural heritage of the Etruscans resurfaces in these imposing walls too, once completely buried below the soil of the hill.

We are in the core of the acropolis hill, an area that had been wholly covered with dirt in past times. These walls in travertine blocks had no aesthetic function, they were made simply as props against the hillsides; that's why they are called "containment spurs." They can be described as a couple of buttresses, underground structures that physically strengthened and supported Perugia's acropolis from within.

It will be noticed that – unlike the terracing wall near Via delle Cantine, whose travertine blocks had been worked and perfectly squared – the blocks forming these structures were left in a rougher condition. A feature like that confirms that such structures only had a static, while not an aesthetic, function. The Etruscan workers did not bother to polish the surfaces of the blocks since nobody was supposed to see them.