Description
The Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno is Genoa's great burial ground, in the Val Bisagno: one of the most important monumental cemeteries in Europe, an open-air museum of marble statues, arcades and chapels climbing the hillside among the trees.
At its centre rises the statue of Faith by Santo Varni, nine metres tall, carved not for a tomb but to welcome those who enter. Opposite, at the top of an imposing flight of steps, the Pantheon copies the one in Rome, with a portico of Doric columns.
The real show is the arcades, filled with family tombs carved by the leading Genoese artists of the 19th century. In the earliest ones the deceased is portrayed realistically, almost photographically, surrounded by loved ones: the bourgeois patriarch who has earned his rest after a lifetime of work.
Later come languid angels and alluring female figures, in full Art Nouveau taste. Look for the Angel by Monteverde on the Oneto tomb, in the upper western arcade, and a curious statue: death as a beautiful woman carrying the deceased away on a galloping horse.
On the hillside, the chapels show off every style, from Gothic to Byzantine, from Egyptian Revival to Art Nouveau. The Raggio Chapel by Luigi Rovelli is nicknamed the Milan Cathedral for its resemblance to the Lombard duomo.
The best-loved statue is that of Caterina Campodonico, a street seller of ring cakes and peanuts: at the end of the 19th century she used the money she had earned from her work to have herself portrayed life-size by Lorenzo Orengo while she was still alive.
Here lie Giuseppe Mazzini, Nino Bixio, Michele Novaro, who wrote the music of the Italian national anthem, the actor Gilberto Govi and Constance Lloyd, Oscar Wilde's wife, in the English cemetery. There is also a cenotaph to Fabrizio De André.
The project was drawn up in 1835 by the architect Carlo Barabino, who died of cholera that same year: his pupil Giovanni Battista Resasco carried it forward. The cemetery opened on 2 January 1851 and, with later extensions, has grown to about 33 hectares.
Foreign travellers loved it. Mark Twain described it admiringly in The Innocents Abroad, in 1867, and Ernest Hemingway called it one of the wonders of the world.
At its centre rises the statue of Faith by Santo Varni, nine metres tall, carved not for a tomb but to welcome those who enter. Opposite, at the top of an imposing flight of steps, the Pantheon copies the one in Rome, with a portico of Doric columns.
The real show is the arcades, filled with family tombs carved by the leading Genoese artists of the 19th century. In the earliest ones the deceased is portrayed realistically, almost photographically, surrounded by loved ones: the bourgeois patriarch who has earned his rest after a lifetime of work.
Later come languid angels and alluring female figures, in full Art Nouveau taste. Look for the Angel by Monteverde on the Oneto tomb, in the upper western arcade, and a curious statue: death as a beautiful woman carrying the deceased away on a galloping horse.
On the hillside, the chapels show off every style, from Gothic to Byzantine, from Egyptian Revival to Art Nouveau. The Raggio Chapel by Luigi Rovelli is nicknamed the Milan Cathedral for its resemblance to the Lombard duomo.
The best-loved statue is that of Caterina Campodonico, a street seller of ring cakes and peanuts: at the end of the 19th century she used the money she had earned from her work to have herself portrayed life-size by Lorenzo Orengo while she was still alive.
Here lie Giuseppe Mazzini, Nino Bixio, Michele Novaro, who wrote the music of the Italian national anthem, the actor Gilberto Govi and Constance Lloyd, Oscar Wilde's wife, in the English cemetery. There is also a cenotaph to Fabrizio De André.
The project was drawn up in 1835 by the architect Carlo Barabino, who died of cholera that same year: his pupil Giovanni Battista Resasco carried it forward. The cemetery opened on 2 January 1851 and, with later extensions, has grown to about 33 hectares.
Foreign travellers loved it. Mark Twain described it admiringly in The Innocents Abroad, in 1867, and Ernest Hemingway called it one of the wonders of the world.