Otherworldly

Walking through time in Italy's cities of the dead

The old cemetery in Viggiù, supposedly haunted. All photos © Cheryl A. Ossola

As I’m sure you know, Italy has taken a step backward into the clutches of fascism, so maybe you were expecting a political post today. Right now, though, I have nothing to offer except sadness and despair at more evidence of a worldwide trend toward intolerance—racism, xenophobia that translates into anti-immigration stances, misogyny, homophobia. So for now, I’m leaving that topic alone. In the meantime, if you want to understand the political landscape in Italy, I’ll direct you to this Cappuccino post, in which Stacey explains it all, and very colorfully.

Instead, I’ve chosen a much more cheerful topic for today—cemeteries. No, really, I love them, and several recent grave-hopping expeditions have amped up my interest. We’ll get to the cemetery pictured above, but let’s do a compare-and-contrast first.

If you’re asking yourself what’s so great about cemeteries, then you’ve been missing out. For one thing, they’re repositories of history, and for another, they’re art galleries, especially here in Italy. Sure, there’s a certain charm to American graveyards dating back to the 1700-1800s, but they’re nothing like the extravagant displays of grief and memory—and money—you find in Italy.

The cemetery in Brownington, Vermont, typical of New England.

There is one American cemetery that’s famous for its art, and it’s in Barre, Vermont, where quite a few of my ancestors lie. Every one of Hope Cemetery’s markers and monuments is carved from the local quarries’ beautiful gray granite (called Barre Gray), and together they show the skill of the thousands of immigrant stonecutters, most of them Italian (including my father’s family), who flocked to Barre around the turn of the 20th century. (Shamelessly self-promotional aside: my next novel centers on a family of Italian stonecutters in Barre.)

This pensive young girl is one of the best-known monumental sculptures in Hope Cemetery.

Aside from art, though, cemeteries can tell us something about the families buried there or, in my family’s case, create mystery. You’ll find my family scattered around, the Restellis over here, the Puricellis and more Restellis over there, and the Ossolas divided, one grave about 50 yards from two others. And this intrigues me, because the evidence I’ve found in my genealogical and family history searches suggests there was a rift in the family, and circumstances indicate it was likely political. (Again, my next novel!) So my great-aunt Virginia is buried in one well-situated plot, but my great-grandmother Maria Teresa is in another, and I mean wtf, because it’s kind of shoved off to one side of the cemetery on a downslope. Like, you know, some callous relative said, “Yeah, just toss her bones over here in the low-rent district; it’s good enough.” Anyway, I’ve got to wonder—two small plots for a quite large family, why? Maybe the well-situated plot was bought later when whoever paid for it had more money (Virginia did die quite a bit later than Maria Teresa), or maybe the family didn’t want everyone buried together because of that rift. Unfortunately, I’ll never know.

Anyway, as much as Hope tugs at my heartstrings, it can’t compare to the monumental cemeteries in Italy. Even small towns with populations of 10,000 (or half that, or a third) boast cemeteries with impressive monuments and mausoleums of exquisite design. Perugia’s is jaw-dropping—though for the crème de la crème of monumental cemeteries, go to Milano, which is truly a metropolis of the dead—and walking through it, you see name after recognizable-from-history-books name and wide lanes lined with mausoleums that would make damn fine houses.

Perugia’s cimitero monumentale is filled with gorgeous art.

It’s particularly interesting to visit the cimitero monumentale when you’ve just been to the Etruscan necropolis in nearby Ponte San Giovanni (technically part of Perugia). Two cities of the dead, centuries apart, but both powerfully beautiful and poignant.

If cemeteries are portals to the past, then in the case of the Ipogea dei Volumni, we’re talking way, way, way past. Like the Hellenistic period, from the 3rd to the 1st century BCE, though some of the tombs are even older, dating to the 6th and 5th centuries. The Etruscans were a sophisticated people who lived in the Etruria region of what’s now Italy, between the Tiber and Arno rivers and west and south of the Apennine mountain range. They were at their peak during the 6th century BCE. If you want to learn more about them, you can do it here—but I will say that some of what’s credited to the Romans was Etruscan first, from fresco to construction to agriculture. For example, in Perugia there’s an aqueduct, constructed by Romans and rebuilt in the 1200s, that once carried water up Perugia’s steep hillside to the city’s main fountain. According to what I’ve been told, it was Etruscan technology that allowed that water to flow uphill.

What you see when you go to the Ipogea dei Volumni is one large, well-preserved tomb with several chambers and a hillside dotted with dozens of cavelike openings into empty tombs, some of which (if you’re brave like my friend Mary Ann was) you can enter. The main chamber of the Volumni tomb (which you can visit for only three minutes since breath and body humidity causes damage) contains sarcophaguses and artwork of stunning quality.

Inside the main chamber of the Ipogea dei Volumni.

The upstairs area is filled with carved tablets taken from the tombs in the surrounding hillsides; more artifacts can be seen in a small museum nearby.

Some of the tablets excavated from the Etruscan necropolis.

The necropolis was a little creepy but completely lacking in ghosts. Which brings us back to the photo at the top of this post, of the cimitero vecchio in Viggiù, in the northern reaches of Lombardia. This cemetery is unusual because it was closed and the existing graves left intact. You see, Italy has a sad tradition of exhuming graves of people whose families no longer pay to maintain them; that’s why even though I know my great-grandfather Carlo was buried in Viggiù (in a newer cemetery), he’s no longer there. He died in 1916, and by then most of the family had emigrated, and apparently the ones who didn’t weren’t willing to pony up to keep Carlo’s memory alive. It was especially disappointing for me because many Italian graves have photos on them and I’d hoped to find one. While doing genealogical research in Lombardia, I went to 11 cemeteries, and I’ve gotta say the photos really made history come alive. Names and dates are critical, of course, but when you can look the deceased in their sadly youthful or drooping-with-age eyes, it gets to you.

Cimitero vecchio, Viggiù.

Viggiù’s cimitero vecchio opened in 1820 and closed in 1910, preserving it as a snapshot of the 1800s. Unfortunately vandals have damaged or destroyed many of the monuments; fortunately the most valuable statues were sent to museums. The cemetery isn’t open to the public, but I got a tour from the town’s unofficial historian. You can take a tour too, thanks to this video (in Italian).

Now, about the photo that opens this post—supposedly this woman haunts the graveyard, and though I’m typically skeptical of such claims, I swear I could feel her watching me. You know how some portrait paintings seem to follow you with their eyes? That’s attributed to a painting’s two-dimensionality (and, I imagine, color and shading and light); it doesn’t happen with statues as far as I know. But let me tell you, after I’d taken a look at this statue and felt those eyes bore into me, I was ready to hightail it outta there.

Seriously, though, it’s hard to be in a cemetery without feeling strong emotions. The weight of all those lives lost, the memorials both sentimental and spectacular, people’s stories contained in a range of dates and perhaps a photographed smile, the flowers dead and dried, or fresh and vibrant, or perennial plastic. Cemeteries, in the end, are places of love.

That message hit me hard one day in Bisuschio, not far from Viggiù. At the cemetery there, I watched as a burly, 40-something man gazed at one grave—the box type, at the top of a high wall—for at least 10 minutes, then climbed a ladder and kissed the portrait of his loved one. I have thought of that man and his loss, his memories, often since then. A year later, I can still feel his sadness and grief and love.

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Book of the week:

• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

• The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O’Donnell (I can’t tell you why I’m suggesting this one—spoilers!—but trust me, it fits.)

• Hope Cemetery (Images of America series) by Glenn A. Knoblock

Poem of the week:

• “Alone” by Jack Gilbert