Una base di marmo etrusca da Ripafratta (PI)

In the church of Ripafratta, a small village located along the Serchio river near the north-west slope of the Pisan Mountains, a quadrangular marble block decorated with rams’ heads on each corner has been reused as a baptismal font for a long time. Originally, the monument belonged to a well-known type of Etruscan tombstones produced by Pisan workshops between the second half of the 6th and 5th century BC, above which usually bulbshaped marble cippi were placed. This new find further confirms the wide distribution of these funerary monuments, not only in Pisa, but also in the territory directly dependent on the city in late-Archaic period and even along the main routes that linked Pisa with the nearby regions, such as Volterra or Padanian Etruria, where some of these funerary bases made with Apuan marble were also found.