Oases of peace and calm in noisy Rome: the cemeteries

By Daniela David Sep 7, 2010, 4:43 GMT

Rome - No matter what the season, Rome is always throbbing with tourists. Only the cemeteries have remained as oases of peace and quiet. Whether it's the tiny Camp Santo Teutonico near St Peters Cathedral or the huge Cimitero Verano, the final resting places in the Eternal City are well worth a visit.

'Go on until the next guard post and then turn left,' a Swiss Guard says in pointing the way to Campo Santo Teutonico. Nobody happens on Rome's one German cemetery just by coincidence. It lies behind the walls of Vatican City. While the masses of people stream into St Peter's, the tourist looking for a bit of quiet heads for the tiny cemetery lying behind the largest house of worship in Europe. Here, space was in short supply, so the graves are jammed right up next to one another.

A stroll past the gravestones is also a journey through the history of the Germans in Rome. It was in the 15th century that the 'Arch-brotherhood of the pained Mother of God' took over the cemetery for strangers. To this very day the group of German Catholics living in Rome is the owner of this final resting place. Above all the Germans visit the graves of clergymen, nuns' orders, noblewomen and common citizens - all with one thing in common: Germans who had died in Rome.

For non-Catholics it was impossible to be buried in a Catholic cemetery. And so the Protestant Cemetery was founded in Rome. When in 1738 a student from Oxford became the first to be buried there, the Testaccio district was still far out in the countryside, right next to the Cestius Pyramids.

In the new part of the Cimitero Acattolico - the non-Catholic cemetery - the graves are crowded close to each other. Visitors stroll between orange and olive trees while reading the inscriptions on the gravestones - in German, English, Latin, and even Arabic.

The Romans themselves chiefly want to be buried in Rome's main cemetery, the Cimitero del Verano. Up on the 'Verano' many of the dead lie in houses. One mausoleum bears the inscription 'Alla Memoria' - in memory of - and trees are growing up from its damaged roof.

A common theme running through the many sculptures is that of people in mourning - weeping women sitting on the grave, or children. Sometimes, weeping angels.

Lengthy lanes lined by cypress trees lead to the graves of the 19th and 20th centuries, to that of Italian freedom fighter Garibaldi, for example, but above all to the greats of the silver screen: the film directors Luchin Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Sergio Leone are buried here. Roberto Rosselini's family has its own mausoleum. The grave of Marcello Mastroianni, by contrast, is almost plain, just a simple red flat stone slab.