11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit

The best cemeteries in Italy, like most everything Italian, are stunning. If you’re visiting the country, you may may want to add visiting some of the most fascinating Italian cemeteries to your itinerary.

Il Bel Paese is not all about art and fashion, stunning Mediterranean beaches, and fantastic cuisine. It is also home to a pretty good number of spooky destinations and grim attractions such as cemeteries.

But first let’s gain some insight into the origin of the most fascinating cemeteries in Italy.

Dead people were buried in various ways in the past until Napoleon virtually introduced the urban cemeteries. Napoleon’s Edict of Saint-Cloud in 1804 basically forbade burials in churches and towns.

This edict was responsible for the great park cemeteries in Italian cities. It’s the same case with other major European cities like Paris and London.

The creation of sanctuaries of statuary in most of the older cemeteries in Italy was part of the same movement to stop burying the dead in crypts and churchyards.

The standard cemetery in most Italian towns and villages is a walled enclosure on the outskirts. These cemeteries in Italy are owned by the local council rather than the church.

Multi-storey rows of concrete vaults make up most of the cemeteries in Italy today. They are sealed with marble plaques bearing a small photo of the deceased. This is a practice akin to those of the ancient Etruscans and early Christians.

Over the years, however, the wealthy ones began hiring architects and artists to design special tombs for them. A good number of Italian burial places have now become Cimiteri Monumentali (Monumental Cemeteries), which are essentially open-air museums of funerary art. They are frequently mentioned in guides for tourists as fascinating attractions — “must-see cemeteries in Italy” — to visit.

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit

“Must-see cemeteries” may sound a bit odd for a vacation, but the fascinating cemeteries in Italy are also historic as they are aesthetically pleasing. They warrant a stop from visitors who are truly interested in the country’s culture.

If you’re an aesthete and/or a history buff, or just interested in unusual cemeteries and burial customs like me, you will be delighted with the following list of the best cemeteries in Italy.

1. Monumental Cemetery of Milan

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit

There’s a whole “city of the dead” to be discovered in the Lombardy capital.

The Cimitero Monumentale di Milano (Monumental Cemetery of Milan) is very peaceful and shaded by tall trees — a perfect place to visit if you want to forget you’re in the middle of a large robust city.

The Monumental Cemetery of Milan opened in 1866, making it the oldest cemetery in Italy. With its sheer size and abundance of fascinating tombs and monuments which include the splendid Famedio (Hall of Fame), this Milanese cemetery is well worth an hour or two.

Here you can find over 1,000 sculptures of noted Italian artists, making it feel more like an art gallery than a cemetery. An absolute must-see along with the Duomo when you’re in Milan.

Among the most famous eternal residents of this Italian cemetery are Franco Corelli, Franco Moschino, and Alessandro Manzoni.



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2. Cemetery of San Michele (Venice)

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
Photo by Laima Gūtmane via Wikimedia Commons

Cimitero di San Michele, or Cemetery of San Michele, is actually a small Venetian island that serves as a final resting place for many people who have lived their lives in Venice. It lies between northern Venice and the Murano and can be reached by a vaporetto (water bus).

Isola di San Michele was a prison before Napoleon declared the island an official cemetery in 1837. Today, most people come here for the history — and to see the famous Stravinsky’s grave.

Sergei Diaghilev and Ezra Pound are also buried there.

If you want a dose of Venetian culture, then by all means make a stop at the Cemetery of San Michele!

Please note to act and dress respectfully and all the usual rules of decorum when visiting. This Italian cemetery is still a working cemetery, so there may be mourners and services taking place as well.

Also, beware of seagulls!

Book a tour here!



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3. Campo Santo Monumentale di Pisa

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit

It is said that this huge Gothic cemetery was built on a shipload of sacred soil from Golgotha. They also say that bodies buried here decompose within 24 hours.

One of the most beautiful cemeteries in Italy, the Campo Santo Monumentale di Pisa was constructed from 1278 until 1464. Buried underneath are the ruins of the old baptistery of a church.

The cemetery contains over 80 Roman sarcophagi, as well as Roman and Etruscan sculptures and urns. These ancient relics can be seen at the archeological museum inside the cemetery. The impressive frescoes from the 8th century will make you forget you’re in a graveyard.

The Campo Santo is an architectural masterpiece, so well worth a stop when you’re in Pisa.



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4. Fontanelle Cemetery of Naples

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
Photo Courtesy: Fontanelle Cemetery

Skeletons of plague victims lie in silence beneath the busy city streets of a southern Italian city.

Stacked high in an underground chamber in Naples, these skeletal remains serve as an antidote to the frenetic life thriving above them.

The Fontanelle Cemetery was a tuff quarry before it became the final resting place of thousands of plague victims in 1656.

Today, about 40,000 skeletal remains are in this Italian cemetery, all unnamed except for those of Donna Margherita di Petrucci Azzoni and Filippo Carafa Count of Cereto of the Dukes of Madaloni. They are also the only ones resting in coffins.

Donna Margherita, according to legend, choked on a piece of gnocchi and died by suffocation. (The deadly dumplings!)

The Fontanelle Cemetery is a whole different way to experience Naples. It’s a fascinating treat for dark tourists — certainly one of the best cemeteries in Italy and among the country’s best grim attractions.

Learn more about this exciting tour here.



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5. Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
The Angel of Grief statue at Cimitero Acattolico
Photo by Thomas Oboe Lee via Wikimedia Commons

Often referred to as the Protestant Cemetery by locals, or the English Cemetery, the Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome (Cimitero Acattolico) is in the trendy neighborhood of Testaccio, about a 15-minute walk from the Colosseum.

The Pyramid of Cestius is visible from within the cemetery.

Said to contain possibly the most number of famous and important graves in the world, you’ll have fun counting graves with big names like Keats and Shelley.

Except that Keats’ grave doesn’t bear his name. Instead, his tombstone says “YOUNG ENGLISH POET” with the epitaph: “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.”

The Angel of Grief sculpture is worth checking out as well.



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6. English Cemetery of Florence

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
Photo by Samuli Lintula via Wikimedia Commons

Cimitero degli Inglesi, or English Cemetery, is a nice little cemetery next to a traffic circle in the middle of Florence.

The English Cemetery is definitely one of the city’s best delights. Here you can walk around, reading epitaphs as there are tons of interesting headstones with English inscriptions, plus a couple of surprises.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is buried here, but hers is not the only notable grave to see in this cemetery.

Once upon a time, in 1828, when the English Cemetery was only just a year old, the famous Egyptologist Ippolito Rossellini bought a young African slave and brought her to Florence to set her free.

Her name was Nadezhda de Santis, the first ever to be buried at the Cimitero degli Inglesi.



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7. Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno (Genoa)

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit

Besides its massive size and sheer beauty, Mark Twain visiting the Staglieno Cemetery while he was in Genoa warranted this cemetery a spot in the list. Friedrich Nietzsche was a frequent visitor as well.

Genoa’s Monumental Cemetery is a stunning burial place famous for its extraordinarily delicate and life-like grief sculptures. Its architecture is combined with a natural layout, which is similar to Paris’ Père Lachaise.

This beautiful Italian cemetery opened in 1851, at the time when Genoa was Italy’s major center of education, attracting reformists and a silk-stocking crowd. They would later have funereal sculpture placed on their final resting places. This tradition stemmed from their desire for their work and other accomplishments to be remembered in lasting memorials.

The Staglieno is the largest cemetery in Italy. With its seemingly unlimited statues and ornaments of great artistic value, you can easily spend a couple of hours here and only explore a fraction of it.

One of its most popular sculptures is a tall statue of Faith, opposite a replica of the Pantheon in Rome.

Another favorite attraction is the life-like statue of Caterina Campodonico, a peasant nut-seller who saved all her money for a lavish tomb. Her statue shows her holding a string of walnuts.

A visit to the Staglieno is almost mandatory. Sculptures galore in every direction may strike you with Stendhal syndrome.

Don’t say no one warned you!

Click here to book a tour of the Staglieno Cemetery.



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8. Monumental Cemetery of Perugia

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
Photo by Fabio Tiberi via Wikimedia Commons

Pope Leone XIII opened the Monumental Cemetery of Perugia in 1949. Located near the templar complex San Bevignate, this monumental structure comprises of fine examples of Peruginian sculpture and architecture of the 9th and 10th centuries.

Numerous precious works of art in a mixture of Realism, Expressionism, Liberty, Art Déco, and Eclecticism adorn the tombs of mainly wealthy Perugians.

If you walk through the boulevards, you will come across chapels and arcades, as well as the of several notable figures of Perugia’s politics, history, arts and literature.

The sepulchres and ornate mausoleums of illustrious Perugian families are well worth a visit, too.

Monumental Cemetery of Perugia is certainly the best cemetery you can visit in the Central Italy’s Umbria region.



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9. Monumental Cemetery of Messina

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
Photo by Mazza D. via Wikimedia Commons

One of the most important monumental cemeteries in Italy, the Monumental Cemetery of Messina or Messina’s Gran Camposanto is also among the most artistic ones. It’s a massive 19th-century graveyard on a hill filled with works of art and illustrious eternal residents.

The Monumental Cemetery of Messina is basically a city park slash open-air art gallery. One of its most important feature is the Cenobio, a gothic-style church located at the top of the cemetery. There’s also the square surrounded by flowers, bursting in Messina’s symbolic colors — yellow and red on a white field, which make up a pattern depicting the coat of arms of the city.

These make up the necropolis of the city of Messina. It is the eternal resting place of some of the most illustrious Messinians such as Ettore Castronovo, Felice Bisazza, Giuseppe Natoli, and Giuseppe La Farina. Their cenotaphs can be seen in the catacomb-like underground tunnel crossing the memorial chapel.

The Monumental Cemetery of Messina is the second oldest cemetery in Italy and the third largest in Europe — a definite must-visit in the Sicilian city of Messina. But please note that you can only take pictures of the square at the main gate from the street.



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10. Certosa di Ferrara Cemetery

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
Photo by Lungoleno via Wikimedia Commons

In 1452, Borso d’Este built a Cathusian monastery for monks who lived inside the walls of the Emilia-Romagna city of Ferrara without meeting anyone all their lives. The monastery was closed during the Napoleonic era.

In 1813, the city of Ferrara in the region of Emilia-Romagna bought the complex and converted it into a cemetery.

The Certosa di Ferrara Cemetery contains stunning Reinassance architecture mixed with the breathtaking gardens and green spaces that prompted the locals to call it a “countryside inside the city.”

This a beautiful setting with wide open spaces and numerous cloisters — a lovely, peaceful place to walk around, listen to the birds, and see the final resting places of generations of Ferraresi.



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11. Monumental Cemetery of the Certosa di Bologna

11 Best Cemeteries in Italy To Visit
Photo by Effepi93 via Wikimedia Commons

The cemetery of the Certosa di Bologna (Bologna Charterhouse), like the one in Ferrara, used to be a Carthusian monastery. It was built in 1334 and was closed by Napoleon in 1797, becoming the city’s Monumental Cemetery some 4 years later.

Praised highly by the likes of Dickens, Byron, Stendhal, and Theodor Mommsen, Bologna‘s Certosa Monumental Cemetery is one of the oldest cemeteries in Europe.

Excavations of Etruscan objects and a tomb were made during the 1800s, proving that the whole area had been an Etruscan necropolis back in circa 500 BC.

This enormous Italian cemetery is located outside the city walls with a great view of Santuario di Madonna di San Luca. It consists of a green lush landscape, imposing monuments and fabulous sculptures ranging from the beautiful to the macabre, labyrinthine walkways, and graves that vary from plain to majestic.

Every corner and every section of the Certosa di Bologna provide something incredible to see.

The cimetero is about a 30-min. walk from Piazza Maggiore, not far from the Bologna FC Stadium. Not to be missed when you’re in this historic Northern Italian city.



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