Last updated View over the park from the edge of the heights. The Bay of Baratti is visible on the left.
The Archaeological Park of Baratti and Populonia is located in the township of Piombino (Province of Livorno) and covers about 80 hectares between the slopes of the promontory of Piombino and the Gulf of Baratti coast. It is part of The Parks of Val di Cornia and was opened in 1998 for visitors to view some of the archaeological sites and remains found in the new digs archaeological conducted in the area since 1996.
Piombino is an Italian town and comune of about 35,000 inhabitants in the province of Livorno (Tuscany). It lies on the border between the Ligurian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea, in front of Elba Island and at the northern side of Maremma.
Livorno is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 158,493 residents in December 2017. It has traditionally been known in English as Leghorn.
The park includes several areas from the ancient Etruscan city of Populonia, the necropolis of San Cerbone, Casone and the grotto, and the cave of calcarenite. Inside the park is an experimental archeological laboratory.
Etruscan cities were a group of ancient settlements that shared a common Etruscan language and culture, even though they were independent city-states. They flourished over a large part of the northern half of Italy starting from the Iron Age, and in some cases reached a substantial level of wealth and power. They were eventually assimilated first by Italics in the south, then by Celts in the north and finally in Etruria itself by the growing Roman Republic.
Populonia or Populonia Alta today is a frazione of the comune of Piombino. As of 2009 its population was 17. Populonia is especially noteworthy for its Etruscan remains, including one of the main necropolis in Italy, discovered by Isidoro Falchi.
A necropolis is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek νεκρόπολις nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead".
There are currently several proposed routes:
San Cerbone necropolis, with tombs from the 7th-6th century BC;
the "Via delle Cave": from fields of the Arpa, a path leading to Etruscan cave of calcarenite (or stone bench), with tombs carved into the rock of the necropolis from the 4th-3rd BC
the "Via del Ferro" a path along the coast with the experimental archeology laboratory, which offers a glimpse into the industrial districts of the city, where housing buildings for the manufacture of iron can be found dating from the (6th-3rd century BC);
nature trails along the edge of the Caves.
Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust. Its abundance in rocky planets like Earth is due to its abundant production by fusion in high-mass stars, where it is the last element to be produced with release of energy before the violent collapse of a supernova, which scatters the iron into space.
In 2007 a third area of the park was opened, the acropolis, which is located at the Castle in upper Populonia and includes remains from the most ancient Etruscans, up to the Romans.
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.
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