Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno

Interesting facts

Caterina Campodonico, a poor street seller of nut necklaces, spent her life savings on a lifelike statue of herself by Lorenzo Orengo.

Her tomb bears an epitaph in Genoese dialect explaining that she saved her coins through wind, sun and rain so as to be remembered.

Giulio Monteverde's angel of 1882 on the Oneto tomb was copied so widely in cemeteries around the world that it became a style of its own.

The architect Carlo Barabino died in the cholera epidemic of 1835, the year his plan for the cemetery was approved.

Construction began in 1844 on the grounds of the Villa Vaccarezza, and four people were buried on the opening day.

The Raggio Chapel by Luigi Rovelli is nicknamed the Duomo di Milano for its likeness to Milan's spiky Gothic cathedral.

Chapels on the wooded hillside mix Gothic, Byzantine, Egyptian revival, Mesopotamian, neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles.

Michele Novaro, who composed the music of the Italian national anthem, is buried here, as is Garibaldi's general Nino Bixio.

Since 1902 the cemetery has had its own crematorium temple, and a Muslim section sits alongside the English, Protestant and Jewish ones.

Ernest Hemingway is said to have counted Staglieno among the wonders of the world.

Why it is worth it

Staglieno is less a graveyard than a city of marble built by nineteenth-century Genoa for its dead. Planned first by Carlo Barabino and, after his death in 1835, carried through by Giovanni Battista Resasco, it opened on 2 January 1851 on the slopes of the Bisagno valley. Today it stretches over more than a square kilometre and holds well over a hundred thousand graves, which places it among the largest cemeteries in Europe. Its logic follows the Napoleonic reform of burial that pushed cemeteries out of churches and town centres, but Genoa turned the rule into a showpiece of civic pride.

The core is a great quadrangle of arcades climbing toward a domed Pantheon, a deliberate echo of the Roman temple, fronted by a Doric portico and marble figures of prophets. In front of it stands Santo Varni's colossal statue of Faith, some nine metres tall. The real treasure, though, lies in the galleries: row after row of family tombs where the merchant bourgeoisie commissioned sculptors such as Giulio Monteverde, Augusto Rivalta, Leonardo Bistolfi and Edoardo Alfieri to portray grief, piety and, quite openly, status. Mourners in veils and lace carved from stone, angels with feathers rendered one by one, portraits of the dead in frock coats: the realism is astonishing, and the transition from sober neoclassicism to sensuous Art Nouveau can be followed wall by wall.

Beyond the arcades the cemetery climbs into woodland, where chapels and small temples are scattered among the trees, and separate sections serve English, Protestant and Jewish burials. Among those laid to rest here are Giuseppe Mazzini, the prophet of Italian unity, the partisan leader and post-war prime minister Ferruccio Parri, the singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André and Constance Lloyd, the wife of Oscar Wilde. Staglieno has long attracted writers: Mark Twain admired it in The Innocents Abroad, and Nietzsche walked here repeatedly in the 1880s. A later generation met it through photographs by Bernard Pierre Wolff of its tombs, used on the sleeves of Joy Division records.

Getting there

The cemetery lies about 2.8 km from central Genoa, in the valley of the Bisagno. The nearest airport is Genoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA), around 9 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Cimitero monumentale di Staglieno is an extensive monumental cemetery located on a hillside in the district of Staglieno of Genoa, Italy, famous for its monumental sculpture. Covering an area of more than a square kilometre, it is one of the largest cemeteries in Europe.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia