I will be visiting this area for a day and want to see the best of the Etruscan leavings. I'm hoping someone has seen these places and can advise me. I know I want to see the Etruscan museum in Tarquinia, but I am wondering, time probably not allowing to see everything, what I should prefer to see among the necropoli in each town and the Cerveteri museum. If it makes a difference, I am fonder of sculpture than painting.

I was only at Tarquinia and Chiusi. As to the difference betwewen Tarquinia and Cerveteri, you may check https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1158/

Thank you, that was helpful. I hadn't realized those were UNESCO sites,

I've been to both.
In Tarquinia, most of the tombs are below ground level. You go down a few steps to view the tombs behind glass. There are several very beautiful painted tombs. At ground level, there's not much to see.

In the town of Tarquinia, there's an excellent museum. One of the tombs from the necropolis was brought away and reassembled in the museum. (There are some polemics about this, but it's a done deal, and it's a beautiful tomb.)

Most of the tombs at Cerveteri are at ground level, and you walk among rows of mound tombs. To me, it was much more atmospheric. You can even walk inside some of them, or you could when we were there. Most have lost their decorations. (Many were hauled away to the Vatican Museums, long ago.) There is at least one very beautiful painted tomb, which you can see through glass.

There's also a museum in the town of Cerveteri, but we didn't get to see it.

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Thanks, bvlenci. I'm beginning to think I'm going to have to fit in both necropoli and the museum in Tarquinia somehow. Probably doable, but I'll have to step lively, as I'm starting the day in Rome and ending in Pitigliano.