(creators/architects unknown) (3rd bc). Cerveteri Burial Chamber. Cerveteri, western Italy.

The Cerveteri Burial Chamber is located west of Rome, nestled seamlessly within the countryside. It is a part of a larger series of burial chambers, designed like a small town, along access ways and huts, providing the dead with the tone of the sleepy village they were accustomed to while living. Decorations and chambers were hewn into the ground rock and developed with stucco and terra-cotta. One large work is of a man and woman in a warm exchange, reclining on a couch, created entirely of terra-cotta, over six feet wide. Images of such tenderness such as this are more positive and inviting in their relation to the afterlife.

An interesting aspect to this burial chamber is that it has a more life-affirming, celebratory tone to it, rather than dwelling on the irreplaceable loss that is associated with death. Decorations are of casual domestic items found around the home, including decorative images that would be common for the time. The plan is simple, spacious, and functional, all traits that would be appropriate for the purpose of the space.

When considering the forms globally, both functional and decorative are either heavily abstracted or geometric. There is a subtle interplay of artificial (domestic) and rectilinear forms creating a steady cross-directional pattern around the horizontal axis of the space which serves to organize it. Culturally, at least in Cerveteri, rural Romans dealt with death in a healthy, holistic manner, imagining those who had passed on enjoying the same simple pleasures they engaged in while living.