When I was little, my aunt Virgina brought me to a beautiful garden. I remember the air being hot, dry, and infused with the smell of pine. We wandered through a maze of mysterious sculptured figures and monuments so elaborate in intricate detail, so life-like, I was sure the people were alive under the dusty marble facades. We were visiting our ancestors. The garden was a cemetery, and it was gorgeous. Ghosts of the past are here in their final resting place. And what a beautiful place to be in death. Cimitero Monumental di Staglieno; haunting and so beautiful. I was never to forget it.
Below is an excerpt of what the American writer Mark Twain said after visiting Staglieno :
“Our last sight was the cemetery (a burial place intended to accommodate 60,000 bodies), and we shall continue to remember it after we shall have forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble colonnaded corridor extending around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is marble, and on every slab is an inscription - for every slab covers a corpse. On either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are monuments, tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and are full of grace and beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect, every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish; and therefore, to us these far-reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from the wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship of the world."
"Believe nothing you hear and half of what you see."
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