La mappa mobile degli Etruschi | Valentino Nizzo

Who were the Etruscans, really? A people from afar, an indigenous civilization, a culture born from the encounter of different worlds? The question of their origins has pervaded ancient sources, archaeology, and the modern imagination for centuries. In this lecture at the 2026 Festival dei Popoli Italici, Valentino Nizzo reconstructs the Etruscan world, starting from a fundamental problem: identities cannot be easily confined within a colored map. "Magna Etruria" is not a compact and immobile space, but a dynamic system of expansions, overlaps, economic exchanges, cultural hybridizations, and long-term transformations. From the Po Valley to Campania, from Pyrgi to Spina, from Alalia to Cumae, the history of the Etruscans appears as a Mediterranean story. Relations with the Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans demonstrate a civilization capable of absorbing external models, reinterpreting them, and restoring them in original forms: in art, sanctuaries, religion, writing, and the construction of power. Ample space is also devoted to the question of origins: the migration from Lydia recounted by Herodotus, the Pelasgian theory of Hellanicus, and the autochthony advocated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Rather than solving the problem with a single formula, the lesson shows how each ancient tale responds to a specific political, cultural, and ideological context. From the Etruscans assimilated by Rome to the modern memory of ancient heritage, the course invites us to rethink what it means to speak of peoples, borders, and identities. Because an identity is never a frozen block in time: it is a historical construction, fragile and powerful, born of movement, encounters, and shared memory.