Road station
Saturnia
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Saturnia, on the river Albegna in the hills behind Vulci, was called Aurinia in Etruscan times, as the Roman writer Pliny notes. Under Rome it took the name of Saturn, the old Italian god of sowing and of a lost golden age, and in 183 BC Rome settled a colony of its citizens here. Its wall of huge polygonal blocks with four gates still stands, and around the town lie tombs from the early Iron Age onwards.