The chariot that made Monteleone di Spoleto famous, found in 1902 together with other artifacts, was buried on the Colle del Capitano (Captain’s Hill) in the burial mound of a local prince.

Since 1903 it has been part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

A stylistic analysis and the presence of two black-figure Attic cups suggest that the burial complex goes back to no earlier than 530 B.C. The chariot instead dates from the second quarter of the 6th century B.C. The style is typical of Ionic art. From the mid-6th to the beginning of the 5th century B.C., the assiduous and intense trade with the Ionic towns of western Asia Minor had a profound influence on Etruscan art, which was inspired by Ionic art, reinterpreting the mythical content according to the original stylistic forms, but with its own sensitivity and tastes. In the same period, the great Etruscan bronze masters were flourishing in Perugia; in the south, there was the famous school of terracotta sculptors – founded by the legendary Vulca – that created the Veio Apollo and the Sarcophagus of the Spouses from Cerveteri. The chariot, commissioned by a prince of the people living along the sacred river Nahar (today the Corno) to an Etruscan artist from Perugia or Chiusi, shows how the deep breath of the Mediterranean had reached the mountains of Perugia, carrying echoes of the deeds of the heroes of the Trojan cycle.

Although an instrument of war, the Monteleone chariot had nothing to do with war: it was an aristocratic symbol, and in its time it was already a thing of the past. The Homeric description of heroes on “well-built chariots” belonged to older times when war was based more on individual valor than on esprit de corps. The fast chariots had been replaced by cavalry squadrons that fought according to new tactical strategies. Chariots such as this one were used for parades in this world and in the world beyond, or for competitive games. The prince wanted to have it with him in his final resting place, a sign that he intended to appear in it before gods, as he had done before his people.

The triptych of panels making up the chariot box sums up the ideal life of a warrior: initiation with the receiving of armor; glorious combat; the final apotheosis that makes the hero a demigod. Achilles served as the ideal model for our prince.

A copy of the chariot, made by the school of Giacomo Manzù, is kept at the San Francesco complex in Monteleone.