extended along the shore with two urban districts separated a pebbled road and each facing one of the two ports. The northern district was the arx built on the rocky promontory which was later occupied by the Roman colony. The southern district included buildings and possibly an agora bordered to the south by another wide pebbled road. Nearby, to the south of the town, was the religious sanctuary, one of the most important in Etruria visited by Greeks and Phoenicians. Remains exist of its Etruscan defensive town walls in polygonal blocks of limestone and sandstone, neatly jointed. They enclosed a rectangular area of some 200 x 220 m. The south-west extremity has been destroyed by the sea. The monumental northern sanctuary The 1957 excavations found the remains of a large temple (temple A) with a triple-cella arrangement and with exceptional terracotta statues. The temple was later found to be within the (northern) sanctuary dedicated to Ilithyia and Cavatha (Greek Leucothea) in an area of 6,000 m2 bounded by a side wall and with two monumental temples, the oldest of which is “B”. Temple B was commissioned around 510 BC by the king of Caere, Thefarie Velianas and consisted of a single cella of Greek inspiration surrounded by columns on all sides. According to the inscriptions of the gold tablets, the temple was dedicated to the Phoenician goddess Astarte (or Uni in Etruscan according to the tablets), warrior goddess and dispenser of love associated with the Greek Ilithyia. Connected with the temple was a wide building with twenty cells where the deitys' priestesses lived. The poet Lucilius referred to them as the "prostitutes of Pyrgi" (scorta Pyrgensia). On the left of the temple a small precinct "C" with cylindrical altar contained a pit consecrated to the underworld cult of Tinia (the Etruscan version of Jupiter) who is mentioned along with Uni in one of the bronze inscriptions found in the same enclosure together with the gold sheets. Temple A, more imposing than "B", was built around 470-460 BC also on the initiative of the City of Caere to reaffirm its dominion after being defeated by the Syracusans at Cumae in 474 BC. It was dedicated to Thesan, the Etruscan goddess of dawn, associated with Leucothea, goddess of the sea and sailors. It had an Etruscan plan with cella and alae at the back, three rows of columns at the front, and