The Etruscans appeal to modern audiences as history’s underdogs: once the dominant culture in central Italy, their history and language disappeared soon after Rome’s systematic takeover of Tuscany in the third through first centuries BC. But archaeological discoveries are now revealing the extent to which Etruscan culture has informed and influenced our own culture. Although the famous books and scriptures of ancient Etruria have been almost entirely lost, we can now build an intriguing picture of this group through artifacts, inscriptions and structures, excavated in the region between the Tiber River,* which flows through Rome, and the Arno River of Florence and Pisa. The Etruscan Gallery offers a full panorama of Etruscan and Italic society throughout much of the first millennium B.C., until it was overwhelmed by the growing power of Rome. The first cases in the gallery illustrate the emergence of characteristic Iron Age culture in Italy, with Etruscan and Faliscan* burials of the 9th to 7th centuries BC. The last cases just before the Roman gallery show Hellenistic culture in Italy, dating to the third and second centuries B.C. The sculpture in stone and terracotta includes votive offerings that commemorate healing, and urns and sarcophagi that feature effigies in relief on the lids. The last inscribed urns illustrate the change from the Etruscan language to Latin, which came with Roman domination.