The Tomb of the Mermaid, one of the first monuments in the Etruscan necropolis of Sovana to be subjected to detailed scientific analysis, was discovered by the Englishman S. J. Ainsley and his fellow traveller George Dennis in 1843.
The recess, decorated with a blind arcade, would have housed an effigy of the deceased in a half-reclined position, as if attending a banquet in the underworld, while outside stood two demons guarding the entrance to Hades, a man and a woman. The eardrum above the lintel is filled with another of the many monsters that populated the Etruscan underworld, a Scilla - and not a Siren or a Mermaid, as was first thought - holding up the droppings of a shipwreck (on which the soul of the deceased travelled from this place), the coils of her forked tail intertwined around two winged figures.
The burial chamber below is very small and probably only housed the burial vault containing the ashes of Vel Nulina, (son of) Vel, as inscribed in the niche. This carved tomb dates to the late 3rd and early 2C BC.
At the time of its discovery, the tomb was described as having a large vertical crack running down the left side, which became progressively worse until 1999 when the corner section fell away. This has now been repaired.
In fixing the bedrock to prevent further fractures and sorting the broken fragments in 2003, archaeologists have discovered two new sculpted tombs. One is of the "semi-dado" type, of which only the lower section survives, while the other - although in a poor state of repair - has two chambers consisting of a square base section with a cylindrical one above. To this second tomb belongs the fragment with the sculpted female figure currently placed to the left of the Siren. This tomb dates from the late 3rd century AD.