london1967 | Entries tagged with cemetery

I'm in Italy for a long week-end, visiting my parents.
This afternoon I went up to the Basilica of Superga and stopped on the way to visit a small part of the Cimitero Monumentale.
It's the largest in the city and was built in 1827-1829. Expanded a few times and bombed in 1943.

This is the main entrance with the chapel

I love wandering around cemeteries and taking pictures of statues. Somehow I feel that they really talk to me.

Turin is famous for its miles of "portici" (colonnades), and the cemetery is no exception

In this photo, you can also see the basilica of Superga on the hill

We are not related (LOL!)... but I loved the tomb!

This is the tomb of tenor Francesco Tamagno

I wish I had had more time to visit but I'm sure I'll be back, perhaps on a colourful autumn day or on a bitter winter morning...

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Torino, Italy

I haven't 'blogged' about out Saturday in Naples yet: sight-seeing is such an exhausting and time-consuming business! Plus quite a chunk of time is taken by planning what to do the next day (using public transport has its drawbacks).
I am skipping Saturday for the time being and moving on to the first place we visited this morning (and leaving the rest for another time).

We went to the cemetery of Le Fontanelle in the Rione Sanità. The neighbourhood - apparently - is the 'real' working class Naples, and rather rough, I have to say.
And don't expect a pretty cemetery - the entrance is a metal sliding door: it could have been the entrance to someone's backyard.
The cemetery is a set in a former cave of tufa; the cave was abandoned in the 17th century and used for the victims of the bubonic plague first and then for many more epidemics up to the one of cholera in the mid 19th century.

The bones are stacked up and piled up against the walls but what makes this cemetery quite unique is a local superstition/cult that started in the second half of the 19th century.

People used to 'adopt' a skull and look after it, praying for the release of its owner from purgatory, hoping to get something back when the soul reached heaven.
This custom (started by a priest) went on for a long time until the archbishop of Naples forbade it in the 1960s. But it is certainly not extinct, judging from what is left there as offerings.

I have put the pictures behind a cut because well it's really not everyone's cup of tea. I have to confess that we were both quite glad when we left the place. I had cheese at dinner and I do hope that I'm not going to have nightmares! lol!

( Click here for the photos )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Napoli, Italy

I took these photos a few days before Christmas when I went to Milan for the day.

The Cimitero Monumentale was established in the mid 19th century, more or less at the same time of the "Magnificent Seven" Victorian cemeteries in London. But it couldn't be more different!
While most of the London cemeteries have been partially reclaimed by nature with tombstones crumbling away and tombs enveloped by forests, the one in Milano is very tidy and well kept, although perhaps less 'romantic' as a result.

The main building at the entrance is dominated by the Famedio,

a domed chapel-like building where illustrious Milanesi and Italians are remembered; right under the dome

is the tomb of one of the most famous Italian authors, Alessandro Manzoni.

It was lovely to wander around the cemetery on that crisp winter morning, and such a contrast to the crowds of Piazza Duomo and the centro later in the day!

Here are a few photos:

You can see more in the slideshow:

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: London, SE20

and I haven't posted pictures of Edinburgh yet, here are a few of Old Calton Hill Burial Ground which was just across the road from the hotel.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: London, SE20

I spent part of the afternoon walking around a cemetery.
Nunhead is one of 7 great Victorian cemeteries built in the 1850s: most of it has become a wood and you can see tombs everywhere among the vegetation and the trees.

It was a lovely place to be on a hot summer day shielded by the relentless rays of the sun by the abundant vegetation.
Compared to other London cemeteries such as West Norwood or Highgate, I found its charms less immediate but it grew on me and, by the end, I felt as I couldn't leave (maybe it was because I felt rather melancholic today and it was the perfect place to reflect on the folly of life and men)

I am glad I wore jeans because I would have scratched my legs with all the brambles and nettles, and I didn't venture off the main paths much.
There is a lovely spot at the top of the hill where a gap among the trees frames St. Paul's Cathedral quite perfectly: I might have even gasped when I saw it.

Here's a selection of some of the pictures I took (you can see more, on the Flickr slideshow below)