The Tanella di Pitagora: is it the real grave of the famous Pythagoras?

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The so-called Tanella di Pitagora is located a short distance from the walls of Cortona in Maesta del Sasso, halfway between Camucia and Cortona. The name derives from the confusion made in the past between Cortona and Crotone, the homeland of the philosopher Pythagoras, believing that the monument was the house in which he lived.

We do not know when the tomb was discovered but the first to give news of the monument was Giorgio Vasari who had the opportunity to see it in 1566. In the seventeenth century it was clarified that the construction had no relation to Pythagoras and that it was rather a tomb. In the nineteenth century there is news of the precarious conditions of preservation of the tomb (in 1808 the tomb was damaged by Napoleonic troops during the passage from the territory of Cortona) and of the discovery of a funerary stone formed by a parallelepiped surmounted by a sphere, the inscribed lid of a cinerary urn and fragments of very rough vases (jars?). Between 1918 and 1924 there was a significant restoration of the tomb. In 1929 the monument was donated by Countess Maria Laparelli Pitti (owner of the land on which the monument stood) to the Etruscan Academy to which it still belongs today.

It is a chambered sandstone tomb built on a base and equipped with a circular drum with a barrel roof.

The door of the tomb was locked with two leaves. A short trapezoidal dromos led to the internal burial chamber (2.60 x 2.05 m), equipped with niches on the sides and on the bottom for the deposition of funerary urns. On the right wall there are three niches; on the left, preserved only for the height of a row, only one niche is visible; on the back wall the niches are superimposed, the highest one is larger and is rounded in correspondence with the upper part of the tomb. It may be that the latter housed the ashes of the progenitor.    

The roof of the room was made of a vault with five stone monoliths (three remain today) and two lunettes placed on the short sides.

The upper part of the monument was covered by a mound of earth with a mark.

From the area of the tomb comes the lid of an urn inscribed "v: cusu: cr: l: apa petrual: clan". The tomb therefore belonged to the Cusu family who are also involved in the transaction concerning land referred to in the Tabula Cortonensis. It is an aristocratic gens repeatedly attested in the Cortona area. 

The tomb can be dated to the second century BC.

In 1951 near the Tanella di Pitagora another tomb called Tanella Angori (datable to the second century BC) came to light from the name of the owner of the land where it was found and by analogy with the Tanella di Pitagora. Of this tomb only the circular base formed by large sandstone slabs remained visible. As far as it has been possible to reconstruct, the monument had an external drum and an internal rectangular burial chamber with two perpendicular arms. The roof must have been barrel-shaped and probably the tomb was surmounted by a mound. From the area of the tomb more recently a sandstone slab inscribed "larth : kusu : markeal" was recovered. This tomb is therefore also attributable to the Cusu family.

The architectural model of the tanelle is also found in Chiusi and Perugia.

On the tanella of Pythagoras see, among others, Paolo Bruschetti, Paola Zamarchi Grassi, Cortona Etrusca Examples of Funerary Architecture, Calosci, 1999, pp. 69 et seq.; Mauro Menichetti, The new monumental tombs in MAEC Museum of the Etruscan Academy and the City of Cortona The Museum of the Etruscan and Roman City of Cortona Catalogue of the Collections edited by Simona Fortunelli, Edizioni Polistampa, 2005, pages 357 – 359.