Community leaders and archaeologists in central Italy recently gathered in the municipality of Montalto di Castro for the opening of a tomb that dates back more than 2 1/2 millennia, the municipality announced in a social media post last week.

“Today … we witnessed the opening of an ancient Etruscan tomb buried at the Osteria Necropolis in Vulci,” the municipality of Montalto di Castro, which sits along the Mediterranean Sea about 100 miles northwest of Rome, wrote Oct. 27 on Facebook, calling the grand unveiling “a day of culture and history” in a translated statement.

Historians say the Etruscans built their civilization on a portion of the land that is now modern-day Italy, beginning as early as 900 B.C., and operated as a network of city-states not completely unlike the Roman Republic that came after it. The Etruscans dominated Italy until falling, as a result of the Roman-Etruscan wars, to the then-expanding Roman empire around the 4th century B.C.

Vulci, an archaeological site in the northern Lazio region not far from Montalto di Castro, was once a rich Etruscan city. Its ruins have become a popular spot for tourist visits and as well as a place of interest for archaeological excavations.

The tomb discovered there earlier this year was found remarkably intact when it was officially opened at the end of October, for the first time in about 2,600 years, according to the Italian online magazine Finestre sull’Arte, which focuses on ancient and contemporary art. It was opened and explored following the opening of a similar tomb in the area this past April, the magazine reported. Montalto di Castro Mayor Emanuela Socciarelli attended the opening along with Simona Baldassarre, the councilor of culture for the Lazio region, Simona Carosi, the manager of the Superintendency of Archaeology for the province of Viterbo and southern Etruria, and Carlos Casi,