Even though some media often concern with italic prehistoric-culture outside Italy, the Italians still have some culture left “at home”.

In the Vatican Museum an Etruscan bronze chariot is exhibited in the “Museo Bronce-chariot in the vaticanEtrusco Gregoriano”-gallery.

This chariot is made in the same style as the one in the NY Met, mentioned earlier, but the bronze parts is not well preserved in this one (see photo right). Compared to the Met-chariot, the Vatican wagon is much reconstructed, but this only make it more clear how the people in the museum believe this wagon was constructed; wooden parts with bronze-plates as decoration.

This wagon is in a museum, where one could say it might not belong, since the Vatican State has an exclusive status in the Italian Republic, but I have not heard of any Italian authorities demanding this one back to some local museum in the old Etruscan area.. and why not? This wagon is not a part of the Hecht-Medici-case, but it could be argued that the Vatican-chariot belong somewhere else.

This said, the research on Etruscan chariots has a ”missing link”: An over-view! I think it is a “need to be done”-work to gather all information on Etruscan chariots in and outside Italy, and hereby try to establish, if possible, some kind of typology in this material. Almost all wagons exhibited, that I know of, are dated between 550-500 BC, but I do not think it possible to be the only period of Etruscan bronze-chariots. Maybe the purpose of these wagons has nothing to do with war..