Travel

Milan Monumental Cemetery. A Love Story

Just before leaving Milan we made one more stop. It might sound strange to you that we went to visit a cemetery even if we had no relatives buried there, but the truth is that Milan Monumental Cemetery is an open air museum with ravishing sculptures and a deeply theatrical atmosphere. The entrance is free for the living and there are maps all over the place pointing to the most outstanding pieces of art.

Milan Monumental Cemetery is located close to the Garibaldi Train Station, in what is now a modern part of Milan with blocks of flats and sky scrapers as the city grew and encompassed it. But when the architect Carlo Maciachini designed it the cemetery was remote from the thickly built central city area of Milan.

Milan Monumental Cemetery was inaugurated in 1866 and it was supposed to meet the new hygenic standards of the time by consolidating a number of small cemeteries that used to be scattered around the city into a single location. Besides Catholics, the cemetery gives comfort to non-Catholics and Jews too. In fact the Palanti Chapel is a monument commemorating the 800 Milanese citizens who were killed in Nazi concentration camps.

As you walk to the entrance square dominated by the Memorial Chapel Famedio you are bound to be impressed. The Chapel gives hospitality to famous and well-deserving men, its architecture bearing a vague reminiscence to churches elsewhere in Italy. But the coridors of tombs richly decorated with marble and stone sculptures where outstanding citizens, like polititians, businessmen, opera singers, poets or sculptors are resting are just the beginning.

Milan Monumental Cemetery is a huge area of 250.000 square meters of highly artistic and often imposing tombs. You will need at least a couple of hours to walk through this peaceful oasis of tombs and you will spot a wide range of both contemporary and classical Italian sculptures as well as Greek temples, elaborate obelisks, and other original works such as a scaled-down version of Trajan's Column.

As I walked through Milan Monumental Cemetery I realized this is more a place of eternal peace that a sad one. Every sculpture tells a love story carved in bronze or marble. And above all, I realized that no matter how much money one might have, under all those layers of wealth, in each and every one of us beats a fragile human heart capable of grief, forgiveness and love.

- Have Dinner In South Africa
Voulezvousdiner Have just launched a new special offer. ...

- Sistine Chapel Endangered By Sweaty Tourists
The Creation Of Adam, Sistine Chapel, VaticanThe priceless frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are in serious danger according to Vatican Museums chief. And tourists are to be blamed. "Sweat, breath, carbon dioxide and all sorts of dust" pose a real threat...

- New Pyramids On Egypt's Tourist Map
Egyptian tourism is being revamped as I write. Visitors always went in flocks to visit the pyramids at Giza and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but now there are new reasons to visit or revisit the country. 11 new pyramids at Abusir, just...

- Bergamo. A Tale Of Two Cities
Bergamo is not a big city. And it's not very famous either, I mean, how many of you have heard about it before? When given the chance to visit Italy everybody crowds in ever famous Rome, Venice or Florence keeping it safely on the beaten path....

- Train Misadventures In Italy
Next day we visited Turin, the capital of Piedmont, about 130km from Milan. We took the train from the Central Station (the ticket costs about 9euros one way per person and it takes 2 hours to get to the destination). However, we made it...

Travel