Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Etruscan Roots of The Twilight Saga

hmm... Tuscany or Shreveport....? Hard decision ;-)
From Independent UK


Were there vampires in Volterra? Probably not, but the Etruscans had their own brigade of gods and demons representing night, death and resurrection.

'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' release fuels vampire mania around the world. While teenagers go completely nuts over the film's hunky vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) – one wrote 'bite me' on her face as she queued with 5,000 others to see him in London last week – other die-hard fans of the Twilight books, written by Stephenie Meyers, are also descending on the small hill-top town of Volterra, in Tuscany, where some of the action of the film is set (even though filming actually took place in Montepulciano, 70 miles away). As a result, hoards of teenagers have been visiting Volterra – a town with Etruscan roots and its own heritage of Etruscan demons, gods and goddesses associated with death, resurrection and the night.

The Twilight Saga isn't the only vampire story to grace our screens lately. The popular US series True Blood – about a young woman in Louisiana who also falls in love with a vampire – based on the The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, also gathered cult status, adding to the growing body of vampire fiction on our bookshelves and on our screens. The nineties saw the likes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Interview with a Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula as well as From Dusk Till Dawn. The 21st century has seen vampire fever take over with Van Helsing, more Buffy and now Twilight and True Blood.

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