Italy's only seaside Etruscan city has been restored on the coast north of this Tuscan port.
The two-year, three-million-euro project has opened up new areas of the ancient necropolis, much of which will be accessible for the first time just outside the charming medieval village of Populonia.
Populonia, as the ancient city has also been called, was famous for working iron from the mines on the island of Elba and the new site lay-out shows visitors how this was done.
The tour features visits to spots with iron-working artefacts, visible traces of iron ore and reconstructions of how the pre-Roman people worked the metal that was their life-blood.
"Iron was produced on an industrial scale here," said local expert Massimo Zucconi.
The more adventurous visitor can also climb up to caves carved into the cliffs overlooking the sea to see local quarries and grave sites.
One of the other highlights of the visit is a huge necropolis featuring the characteristic tumulus mounds that housed the lasting resting places of Etruscan nobles.
The revamped site has been dedicated to the late Florentine archaeologist Riccardo Francovich, who battled all his life to make more of Italy's ancient sites open to the public.
"Franco was an archaeologist but he refused to believe that archaeology should be shut up in a museum somewhere," Zucconi said.
The Etruscans were an ancient people known to have lived in the area of Italy between Rome and Florence from the 8th century BC until they were absorbed by Rome about 600 years later.
For centuries they dominated the fledgling city on the Tiber and even supplied its first kings. But most traces of their advanced civilisation, which produced sophisticated art, were obliterated by their Roman successors.
