Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome has its entrance at Via Caio Cestio 6, in the Testaccio rione, hard against the Aurelian Walls and the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, a step from Porta San Paolo. You get there by Metro Line B, Piramide stop, which is also the urban terminus of the Roma-Lido railway and the hub of tram 3: from the station exit, with the Pyramid behind you, take Via Marmorata and turn left almost immediately onto Via Caio Cestio, three minutes on foot and nothing more. You enter through a guarded gate, not a ticket office: the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome does not sell tickets, you leave a contribution for maintenance at the custodian's desk, and the updated hours, closing days and visiting rules are published on the cemetery's official website, which is worth checking the same day before setting out. The place is a working cemetery, not a museum: you enter in silence, keep your phone muted, don't eat food, don't walk on the flower beds and don't touch anything. The visit lasts between 40 minutes and an hour and a half depending on the attention you give to the inscriptions.

Anyone planning an itinerary on this side of the city will find the other nearby places on the page of Rome's tourist attractions, and can mark the stops with the My Trip button.

What the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome Really Is

The official name says just one thing, and says it by subtraction: non-Catholic. Not Anglican, not Protestant, not Orthodox, not Jewish. Non-Catholic, that is, everything that in the Rome of the popes could not be buried in consecrated ground. From that negative definition there was born, over the span of three centuries, one of the densest places in Europe: barely a hectare of lawn and cypresses where English poets, German painters, archaeologists, diplomats, American sculptors, Russian princesses, a Sardinian philosopher, a Milanese engineer who wrote like no one else, a Roman poet who died of AIDS and a President of the Republic rest.

In Roman speech the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome has had many names, all imprecise and all affectionate: cemetery of the English, cemetery of the Protestants, cemetery of the artists and poets, cemetery of Testaccio. None of these holds up against the registers. The English are a strong minority but a minority. The Protestants coexist with Orthodox, Jews, declared agnostics and militant atheists. The artists are many, but alongside them sleep merchants, doctors, consuls, children who died at six. The honest definition remains the bureaucratic one, and it has the merit of telling the story that generated it.

Why There Is a Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Until the breach of Porta Pia, Rome was a city in which death had a very rigid confessional geography. The norms of the Catholic Church forbade burying non-Catholics in consecrated ground, and with them suicides and actors. The theatrical profession entailed, at death, a sort of posthumous expulsion from the city's Christian community, with burial outside the walls or at the extreme edge of them. The actors had their field outside Porta Pinciana, where Via del Muro Torto runs today. The Jews had their cemetery on the Aventine hill, facing the Circus Maximus, right where the Rome Rose Garden stands now. Anyone strolling among the roses in May is walking over a dismantled cemetery, and almost nobody knows it.

Non-Catholic burials took place at night. The reason is brutal and should be told as it was: manifestations of religious fanaticism were feared, and the darkness served to protect the safety of those taking part in the funeral rites. A Protestant funeral in broad daylight could end in stone-throwing. In 1821 Sir Walter Synod obtained the exception of burying his daughter in full daylight, and to protect himself from raids by fanatics he had himself accompanied by a squad of guards. They brought guards to a little girl's funeral. Keep this detail in mind while you walk on the lawn: it explains the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome better than any plaque.

The History of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, Century by Century

The Seventeenth Century and the Resolution of 1671

The date that opens everything is 1671, when a resolution of the Holy Office agreed that the non-Catholic gentlemen who happened to die in the city would be spared the disgrace of being buried together with prostitutes and sinners in the Muro Torto cemetery. It was not a generous concession: it was an administrative tolerance, calibrated to the fact that foreign nobles, ambassadors and courtiers of exiled sovereigns were arriving in Rome, and that treating their corpses as refuse created diplomatic incidents. The choice of the place did not come from above. The non-Catholics themselves pointed to those meadows under the Pyramid, and the matter was allowed to go on.

The Meadows of the Roman People

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the area of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome was called the meadows of the Roman people. It was public land, and all sorts of things went on there: cattle grazed, wine was stored in the caves dug into Monte dei Cocci, Romans came to relax, to eat, to drink, to play. Above everything loomed the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, which for centuries had been one of the most visited monuments of the Urbe and the very symbol of that edge of the city. A cemetery born inside an open-air tavern: the image is jarring only to us, not to the eighteenth century, which lived with its dead without the hygienic separation that came afterward.

The First Documented Burials

The first burial of a Protestant in this place of which we have certain record was that of William Arthur, a follower of the exiled King James Stuart, who died in Rome where he had come to escape the repressions that followed the Jacobite defeats in Scotland. Others almost certainly preceded him, but no written trace remains. Other interments followed, and they did not concern only the courtiers of the Stuart sovereign who had meanwhile settled in Rome. The chronicler Francesco Valesio records for 1732 that the treasurer of the King of England, William Ellis, was buried at the foot of the Pyramid: the tone in which he notes it suggests an already established custom, not a novelty. Over time the area earned the label of cemetery of the English, although those buried did not come only from the United Kingdom.

The Student Langton and the Tomb Rediscovered in 1928

The first burials had no sepulchral memorial: tombstones began to appear only in the second half of the eighteenth century. So it went for an Oxford student named Langton, who died in 1738 at 25 after violently striking his head when he fell from a horse. Tradition has it that Langton had had a conversation with the pope, in which he expressed the wish to be buried in Rome near the Cestian Pyramid. It is hearsay, and should be taken as such. The documented fact is another, and it is more beautiful than the legend. In 1928, during excavations carried out near the Cestian Pyramid, Langton's tomb came back to light, with the same inscription that is read today on his tombstone. 200 years underground, and the text matched.

The Eighteenth Century Without Official Recognition

Many have wanted to read papal concessions behind the birth of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome. There are none. The burial ground developed without any formal recognition, by custom and necessity, and only at the end of the eighteenth century did the authorities begin to deal with it: the Conservators of the Capitoline Hill were given functions for the secular part and the Vicar of Rome with the Vice-Gerent for the ecclesiastical part. Very mild controls, to tell the truth. Only in the 1820s did the Government appoint a custodian to watch over the area and the cemetery functions.

The public disinterest has an explanation that throws today's reader off. In the prevailing mentality the Catholic conceived of burial inside the church, under the floor, near the altar. A cemetery that provided for interment in bare earth, in the open air, was not perceived as a privilege but as a makeshift solution. Nobody envied it. For that reason it was left to grow.

Humboldt, the Ditch, the Cypresses

In 1803 one of the children of Wilhelm von Humboldt was buried there, then Prussia's minister to the Holy See, who had asked for a plot of land to bury himself and his family. That land, once bounded by a fence, is today included in the cemetery area and preserves some pillars of the old enclosure. Later the minister's wife was also buried there. At the beginning of the nineteenth century only hollies grew in the area, and the tombs scattered in the countryside had no other shelter: flocks grazed among the tombstones. The centuries-old cypresses that today give the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome its shade and character were planted afterward.

In the 1820s the original part of the burial ground was closed and a new enclosure was built, this time bounded by walls, followed then by other extensions. In 1824 a ditch was dug that encircled the old part. Until 1870 crosses and inscriptions were forbidden, as in all non-Catholic cemeteries under papal jurisdiction: the freedom to write one's creed on stone came with the end of the Papal State. In 1918 inhumations were forbidden, and since then the growth of the cemetery has almost entirely stopped.

The Twentieth Century and Management Today

Common graves divided by nation have long existed: Germany, Greece, Sweden and Romania, the latter intended for stateless Orthodox Romanians. The custody and management of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome are entrusted to foreign representations in Italy, according to an arrangement consolidated and recorded as of 2011: a consortium of embassies that shares expenses, maintenance and decisions. It is not an Italian public body, it is not a parish, it is not a museum foundation. It is a diplomatic co-ownership, and this explains both the maniacal care of the lawn and the parsimony with which new places are granted.

How the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome Is Laid Out: the Old Part and the New Zone

The Old Part of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The Old Part is the open lawn under the Pyramid, the one without avenues and almost without vertical monuments. Here the tombstones are few, far apart, lying on the grass, and the view is one of a bareness that no photograph conveys: a green carpet, the cypresses at the back, the white triangle of the tomb of Caius Cestius closing the scene. It is the zone closed in the 1820s, encircled by the ditch of 1824, and it is the piece of the cemetery that has not grown since. Here rest John Keats and Joseph Severn, and here the rule of not stepping on the grass becomes a serious matter: the burials have no curbs, you walk among the dead without realizing it.

The New Zone of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The New Zone, born from the walled nineteenth-century enclosure and the later extensions, is something else entirely: dense, terraced, crossed by narrow paths that climb toward the Aurelian Walls, with chapels, obelisks, broken columns, angels, steles in 10 alphabets. Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin characters with Scandinavian and Hungarian diacritics. You get lost in the literal sense: the layout is irregular, the sectors are numbered, and anyone looking for a specific tomb without a map wanders in circles for 20 minutes. Here the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome resembles a sample book of European funerary sculpture between Neoclassical and Liberty style, with a few pieces that would be worth a museum.

The Funerary Art of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Two absences strike more than any presence. The first: on the tombstones there are no photographs, following the custom of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. No ceramic faces, no faded ovals. The second: until 1870 crosses were missing too, and this left in the Old Part a sobriety that the later zones have lost. In place of portraits, words: the epitaphs here are long, literary, often in verse, written by those who stayed for those who left. Read them. In no other place in Rome has private grief been put in writing with such care and such reticence at the same time.

The Tomb of John Keats in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

John Keats arrived in Rome on November 14, 1820. He had left London on September 13 and had already undergone a very strict quarantine in the port of Naples because of an epidemic. He took a house at number 26 Piazza di Spagna, the building to the right of the Trinità dei Monti staircase where the Keats-Shelley Memorial House stands today. He was accompanied by the painter Joseph Severn, who acted as his nurse until the last day. Tuberculosis put him out slowly. He died on February 23, 1821: he was 25 years old. He was buried three days later in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, at the foot of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius.

On the tombstone, by his own wish, his name is not there. There is a phrase that has gone around the world: here lies one whose name was writ in water. Keats dictated it as a dying man, convinced he had been destroyed by the critics and destined for oblivion. The paradox is that this phrase made him immortal more than any celebratory epigraph. Beside it, a marble slab added by friends answers with another image: if your dear name was writ in water, every drop has fallen from the face of one who mourns you.

The Detail of the Wrong Date

There is a particular that almost no guide tells and that is worth the trip. On Keats's tomb the date carved is February 24, 1821, while the biographies give the 23rd. It is not a mistake of the stonecutter: it depends on the Roman way of counting days, different from the English one Severn, who ordered the tombstone, was used to. A cultural time zone, frozen in marble for two centuries.

Joseph Severn, the Friend Who Stayed

Joseph Severn (1793-1879) did not go back to England. He stayed in Rome, made a career, became British consul in the city and died here at 86, 58 years after the young man he had nursed. He is buried next to Keats. Of all the stories of friendship that this cemetery keeps, this is the one that holds up best on reading: not a gesture, a whole life spent a step away from his friend's tomb.

Percy Bysshe Shelley and the Ashes Brought to Rome

Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned on July 8, 1822 off the coast of Versilia, while taking his boat, the Ariel, back toward Villa Magni at San Terenzo. With him died Edward Williams and the sailor Charles Vivian. A sudden squall, and that was all. His thirtieth birthday was close. The bodies washed ashore 10 days later, at different points of the Viareggio coast. The health regulations of the time forbade burying corpses recovered from the sea, and so cremation had to be carried out: in August 1822 Byron, Trelawny and Leigh Hunt organized on the beach a funeral ceremony in Greek style, pouring perfumes, incense and aromatic oils over the body.

The ashes were brought to Rome and buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery, not far from Keats. On the slab two Latin words are carved, Cor Cordium, heart of hearts, and three lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest: nothing of him doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange. An epitaph chosen for a man who died at sea, with the boat that bore the name of the spirit of the air from the same play. In the same area also rests his son William, who died in Rome in 1819.

The Legend of the Heart

There remains the story of the heart, which must be told for what it is: a tradition, confirmed by Byron in a letter, according to which the organ remained almost intact after the cremation. Trelawny handed it to Mary Shelley in a wooden box, together with the ashes and the bones. Mary kept it until her own death, and the heart was later buried in England, at Bournemouth. So no: at the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome the heart of Shelley is not there, and anyone who tells you it is in front of the tombstone is selling you folklore.

The Angel of Grief, the Most Copied Sculpture in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

In the New Zone, on a family tomb, lies a life-size marble angel, collapsed forward over an altar, the face hidden in the arms, the wings abandoned. It is called Angel of Grief, and the full title wanted by the author is The Angel of Grief weeping over the dismantled altar of life. It was sculpted in 1894 by the American William Wetmore Story (1819-1895) for the tomb of his wife Emelyn. Story was a Boston lawyer who had dropped the law for sculpture and had become one of the pillars of the American colony in Rome.

The break with all earlier funerary sculpture is total. The traditional angel points to heaven, consoles, keeps vigil with composure. This one looks at no one, consoles no one, doesn't even bear its own weight. Story explained it with a sentence that counts as a statement of poetics: it represents what I feel, it represents prostration. It was his last important work. His children had urged him to sculpt it as grief therapy, and the artist died the following year. Under that marble rest he, Emelyn and their son Joseph.

Why You Have Already Seen That Angel

The Angel of Grief has become one of the most copied images in the world. The most famous replica is the Lathrop Memorial at Stanford University, from 1901, damaged by the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and restored in 2001. Another is the Cassard Angel at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, around 1908. Other variations are found in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Massachusetts. From funerary art the image passed into mass culture: album covers by Evanescence, Nightwish and The Tea Party, and cinema with The Woman in Black of 2012. A line of teenagers around the world has hung in their bedrooms the photograph of a Roman tomb without knowing whose it was.

A firm opinion: in front of the original you understand how much worse the copies are. Story worked the marble so that the angel's back absorbs the light and the wings reject it, and this only works under the sky of Rome, at 11 in the morning, with the shadow of the cypresses moving. The replicas are correct, and they are dead.

The Italians Buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The official name says it: the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome is intended for the rest of foreign non-Catholics, without distinction of nationality. Space is scarce and the character of the place has to be defended, and for this reason the burial of illustrious Italians is granted only as an exception, to those who, through the culture expressed in life, foreign to the dominant one, through the quality of their work or through the circumstances of their own existence, were in some way foreign in their own country. It is a bureaucratic formula that, read carefully, is moving: you enter here through deserved estrangement.

Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci was born in Ales on January 22, 1891 and died in Rome on April 27, 1937 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Arrested on November 8, 1926, sentenced by the Special Tribunal on June 4, 1928 to over 20 years, he had passed through Regina Coeli, Ustica, San Vittore, then through the Cusumano clinic in Formia from December 7, 1933 and finally, from August 24, 1935, through the Quisisana clinic in Rome. He had obtained conditional release on October 25, 1934. Full release was set for April 20, 1937. The hemorrhage struck him on April 25, and two days later he was dead. The body was cremated at the Verano and the ashes were transferred in the summer of 1938 to the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, where they still are.

The concession was given to him because he had married a Russian woman, Julca Schucht: a formal reason, which covered an extremely delicate political choice in the midst of Fascism. In the affair his sister-in-law Tatiana Schucht carries enormous weight, who assisted him throughout his imprisonment and who after his death saved the Prison Notebooks by taking them to the Soviet embassy. Without her, one of the most widely read books of political thought of the twentieth century would have ended up in a police archive. Gramsci's tombstone is small, horizontal, with the urn and the name: it goes unnoticed by anyone who isn't looking for it, and it is almost always covered with flowers and notes.

Carlo Emilio Gadda

Carlo Emilio Gadda, born in Milan on November 14, 1893 and died in Rome on May 21, 1973, rests here. An engineer by training, author of Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana of 1957, of Cognizione del dolore of 1963, of Adalgisa of 1944 and of Eros e Priapo of 1967, he had moved to Rome in 1950 and had worked for the RAI cultural programs until 1955. The Roman years are those of his absolute maturity. That the inventor of the pasticciaccio rests in a cemetery full of different languages, where every tombstone speaks an idiom of its own, has a coherence he would have appreciated.

Dario Bellezza

Dario Bellezza (1944-1996), Roman poet, novelist, playwright and translator, was launched by Pier Paolo Pasolini, who after Invettive e licenze of 1971 called him the best poet of the new generation. He had made his debut in 1970 with L'innocenza, a short novel with a preface by Alberto Moravia, and had continued with Lettere da Sodoma of 1972 and Il carnefice of 1973. In 1976 he won the Viareggio Prize with the collection Morte segreta. He translated the complete works of Rimbaud for Garzanti and from 1978 worked with Pellicanolibri, supporting authors such as Anna Maria Ortese and Goliarda Sapienza. When his HIV-positive status became public in 1995, he suffered heavy marginalization. He died of AIDS on March 31, 1996, a few weeks after obtaining the Bacchelli law. Biancamaria Frabotta wrote that his verses are among the most beautiful of the Italian twentieth century. His tomb, here, is the place where a part of the literary Rome of the 1970s still goes to come to terms with itself.

Andrea Camilleri, Giorgio Napolitano and the Others

On July 18, 2019 the remains of Andrea Camilleri (1925-2019) were brought here, who had asked for a secular and discreet burial. In 2023 Giorgio Napolitano (1925-2023), eleventh President of the Republic, was buried, and in 2024 his wife Clio Maria Bittoni (1934-2024), a lawyer. Beside them rest the politician and writer Emilio Lussu (1890-1975) and the partisan and writer Joyce Salvadori Lussu (1912-1998), the writer Luce d'Eramo (1925-2001), the poet Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996), the philosopher Antonio Labriola (1843-1904), the nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo (1913-1993), the actor Arnoldo Foà (1916-2014), the journalist Miriam Mafai (1926-2012), the architecture historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935-1994), the director Gualtiero Jacopetti (1919-2011), the fashion designer Simonetta Colonna di Cesarò (1922-2011), the anthropologist Alfonso Maria Di Nola (1926-1997), the music critic Gianni Borgna (1947-2014), the painter Enrico Coleman (1846-1911), the Greek-born naturalized Italian artist Jannis Kounellis (1936-2017), the journalist and writer Furio Colombo (1931-2025). In recent years new burials have become extremely rare even for foreigners.

The Illustrious Foreigners of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

August von Goethe, the Son Who Died Before His Father

August von Goethe (1789-1830) was the only surviving son of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Christiane Vulpius. After his mother's death in 1816 he had become his father's secretary and archivist, in effect subordinate to him, in a condition that wore him down. At the end of April 1830 he left for Italy with Johann Peter Eckermann, his father's friend and biographer: Frankfurt, Basel, Lausanne, Milan, then Venice and the descent toward Rome. Eckermann fell ill in Milan and August continued alone, also suffering a carriage accident near La Spezia. In Rome he contracted smallpox and died in October 1830, at 40. The German artists of Rome took charge of the burial in the cemetery of the English.

On the tomb there is a medallion portrait sculpted by Bertel Thorvaldsen, the greatest Danish neoclassical sculptor, and the Latin epitaph dictated by his father: GOETHE FILIVS PATRI ANTEVERTENS OBIIT ANNORVM XL MDCCCXXX, the son of Goethe, preceding his father, died at the age of 40. Six words to say the worst thing that can happen to a man. Goethe the father would die less than two years later.

Painters, Sculptors, Architects

The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome is a map of the international artistic colony that lived in the city between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. There are the Russian painter Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852), author of The Last Day of Pompeii, the German-Danish Asmus Jacob Carstens (1754-1798), theorist of draftsmanly neoclassicism, the German Carl Philipp Fohr (1795-1818), drowned in the Tiber at 23, the Swiss Johann Jakob Frey (1813-1865), the German Hans von Marées (1837-1887), the American William Stanley Haseltine (1835-1900), the American symbolist painter Elihu Vedder (1836-1923), the American sculptor Richard Saltonstall Greenough (1819-1904), Franklin Simmons (1839-1913), the Finn Johannes Takanen (1849-1885), the sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872-1940), to whom Rome has dedicated a museum in the studio house he lived in, the painter and engraver Guido Colucci (1877-1949), the Italo-German painter Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844-1905), the Serbian painter Milena Pavlovic Barili (1909-1945). And there is the German architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), the theorist of style who shaped half of nineteenth-century European architecture.

Writers, Scholars, Diplomats

Among the writers rest here the Scotsman Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894), author of adventure novels that inspired Stevenson, the American Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815-1882), who with Two Years Before the Mast changed sea literature, the American novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894), a friend of Henry James, the Englishman John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), the German poet Wilhelm Waiblinger (1804-1830), the Dane Carsten Hauch (1790-1872), the German writer Malwida von Meysenbug (1816-1903), who hosted Nietzsche and Wagner in her salon, the Swedish doctor and writer Axel Munthe (1857-1949), author of The Story of San Michele, the American Beat poet Gregory Corso (1930-2001), the British choreographer and mime Lindsay Kemp (1938-2018), teacher of David Bowie and Kate Bush, the Argentine writer Juan Rodolfo Wilcock (1919-1978), the French poet Jacqueline Risset (1936-2014), translator of Dante into French, and Edward John Trelawny (1792-1881), the adventurer who organized Shelley's pyre on the beach and who wanted to be buried next to him, 60 years later.

The scholars form a category apart, and tell how much Rome was the world capital of ancient studies: the German archaeologist Walther Amelung (1865-1927), who reorganized the Vatican collections, the historian Karl Julius Beloch (1854-1929), the archaeologist Adolf Klügmann (1837-1880), the art historian Richard Krautheimer (1897-1994), author of the monumental corpus of the Christian basilicas of Rome, the English philologist Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro (1819-1885), the American musicologist Oliver Strunk (1901-1980), the Jungian psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard (1896-1965), who introduced Jung to Italy and treated a generation of Roman intellectuals. And then the diplomats: the Swede Carl Bildt (1850-1931), the German August Kestner (1777-1853), the Americans Alexander Comstock Kirk (1888-1979) and George Frederick Reinhardt (1911-1971), the American politician and environmentalist George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882), first United States minister to the Kingdom of Italy.

The Tombs That Take Your Breath Away

Not all the tombstones have a famous name, and the two hardest to read have none at all. One is that of Rosa Bathurst, an English girl drowned in the Tiber in 1824 while riding along the river: the epitaph tells the misfortune at length, with the atrocious precision of the nineteenth century. The other is that of Dirk Hamer (1959-1978), a German boy hit by a gunshot and dead after months of agony, buried next to his mother Sigrid. In the niche carved inside the Aurelian Walls is the tomb of Elisabeth Wegener Passarge. It is these, more than the poets, that explain what a cemetery is.

The Cestian Pyramid That Dominates the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The monument that closes the view from the Old Part is the tomb of Gaius Cestius Epulo, built between 18 and 12 BC. Cestius was a member of the college of the septemviri epulones, the priests who looked after the sacred banquets, and his will required his heirs to complete the tomb in 300 and 30 days, on pain of forfeiting the inheritance: the pyramid was finished within the deadline. It measures 36.40 meters in height on a square base about 30 meters on each side, and is built in concrete with a brick facing and a Carrara marble cladding. The interior burial chamber measures 5.95 by 4.10 meters, 4.80 high.

The angle is much steeper than that of the Egyptian pyramids, and the reason is technical: Roman concrete allowed slopes impossible for cut stone, and therefore more height for the same material. The Egyptian fashion had exploded in Rome after 30 BC, when Egypt had become a Roman province. Cestius had a monument built for himself in the fashion of the moment, and the moment has lasted 2,000 years. In the third century the pyramid was incorporated as a bastion in the Aurelian Walls, and this is exactly what saved it: walled into the circuit, it was not stripped of its marble like almost all the other ancient monuments. In 2015 a restoration costing 2 million euros, financed by the Japanese entrepreneur Yuzo Yagi, gave its whiteness back. For the visit inside and for the complete history of the monument, the dedicated page is the one on the Cestian Pyramid.

The Aurelian Walls Around the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The brick wall that closes the cemetery on the long side is the circuit built by the emperor Aurelian between AD 270 and 275 and finished under Probus around 279. The original circuit measured about 19 kilometers, of which 12.5 are still standing today. The initial height was six to eight meters, nearly doubled to 10 and a half to 15 meters during the works of Honorius, carried out by the general Stilicho around 403, which added a double internal walkway. The rectangular towers numbered 381, one about every 30 meters, and the main gates 14.

To save time and money, the Aurelian Walls incorporated everything that lay along the route: the Amphitheatrum Castrense, the castra praetoria, the aqueducts and, precisely, the Cestian Pyramid. Right next to it opens Porta San Paolo, the ancient Porta Ostiensis, from which the road to Ostia started. Walking among the tombs of the New Zone you touch with your eyes the original Roman facing, with the raisings of different periods legible to the naked eye in the lines of bricks. Anyone who wants to follow the circuit in its entirety will find the full account on the page on the Aurelian Walls, and the history of the ancient road in the Via Ostiense Museum, housed right inside the towers of Porta San Paolo.

The Cats of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The cats are as much a part of the place as the cypresses. They stroll undisturbed among the tombstones, sleep on the warm marble, let themselves be looked at and rarely touched, and in the overall view they contribute to that character that no other Roman cemetery has: green lawn, centuries-old cypresses, the white pyramid rising beyond the fence of Roman walls, tombstones written in all the languages of the world and an orange cat stretched out in the middle. They are looked after by volunteers, as happens in all the Roman cat colonies recognized by regional law, and the pact with visitors is simple: you photograph them, you don't feed them, you don't pick them up.

The relationship between Rome and its cats in archaeological places has a long history and a more famous institution of its own, the Cat Sanctuary of Largo Argentina. Here, though, the tone is different: no cages, no pens, no adoption desk. The cats of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome live in a closed garden, and they look as if they know it.

The Greenery of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Botanically the place is a rarity. There are the Mediterranean cypresses planted in the nineteenth century, very tall today, which hold the vertical scene. Pomegranates, which in late summer bear red fruit above the tombstones. Old roses, laurels, violets, and a closely mown lawn that in the Old Part becomes the very floor of the cemetery. In spring the bloom is something that has to be seen: no historic Roman garden has this contrast between white marble and bright green. The hollies that in the early nineteenth century were the only vegetation are still there, in some points of the old enclosure.

Anyone who loves Roman gardens has, 10 minutes from here going up the Aventine, the Orange Garden, and a little further the Rome Rose Garden, which is open only in two seasonal windows. An afternoon that stitches together the three places is one of the best green itineraries in the city, and almost nobody does it.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Where is the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome?

The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome is at Via Caio Cestio 6, in the Testaccio rione, hard against the Aurelian Walls and the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, a few steps from Porta San Paolo and Piazzale Ostiense. It can be reached by Metro Line B, Piramide stop, three minutes on foot, and the Roma-Lido railway, tram 3 and several bus lines also arrive at the same hub.

How much does it cost to visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome?

There is no real ticket for the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome: at the entrance you leave a contribution for the upkeep of the place, which receives no Italian public funding and is supported by the foreign representations and by visitors' donations. The suggested amount and any reductions are indicated on the cemetery's official website.

Who is buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome?

In the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome rest the poet John Keats, who arrived in Rome on November 14, 1820 and died soon after, and the ashes of Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned on July 8, 1822 off the coast of Versilia. The cemetery is intended for foreign non-Catholics, without distinction of nationality, while the burial of illustrious Italians is granted only as an exception.

Can you take photographs in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome?

Yes, personal photographs are allowed in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, while professional photo shoots and video recording follow different rules to be checked with the management. In general, since it is an active cemetery with recent burials and families visiting, you speak in a low voice, turn off ringtones and don't eat, don't drink and don't have picnics on the lawn.

Is the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome suitable for a visit with children?

Yes, it works under two conditions: the first is to prepare the ground, explaining before going in that it is a cemetery with families visiting and that you speak softly. The second is to give a task, for example asking the children who can read to spot how many different languages they recognize on the tombstones. For the youngest, the cats that live among the tombs and the Pyramid in the background are enough.

How long does it take to visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome?

The full tour of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome takes about 40 minutes, but the advice is to arrive early in the morning, right at opening, on a weekday, and to sit even just for an hour on the bench in the Old Part in front of the Pyramid: here the time spent sitting counts more than the time spent walking.

What is the best time to visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome?

The best time is spring, between March and May, when the lawn of the Old Part is at its greenest and the pomegranates have not yet fruited while everything else blooms. The second recommended period is October, with low light and warm colors on the brick walls. Summer, in a basin without wind, is hard even with the shade of the cypresses.

How to Visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Visiting Rules of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

It is worth repeating because every year someone forgets. This is an active cemetery, with recent burials and families who come to visit their dead. You speak in a low voice, turn off ringtones, don't eat, don't drink, don't smoke, don't have picnics on the lawn, don't run. Personal photographs are allowed. Photo shoots, professional video recording and drones are not, and have to be arranged with the administration. You don't climb on the walls, you don't move objects left on the tombs, you don't pick flowers. With children you explain beforehand where you are going in: here it works, if you do it well.

How Long the Visit to the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome Lasts

A quick visit, with Keats, Shelley, the Angel of Grief and Gramsci, is over in 40 minutes. A visit done properly, reading the epitaphs and going around the sectors of the New Zone, takes an hour and a half. Whoever comes for photography takes two, because the light changes quickly among the cypresses. Without a map of the sectors you walk past Gramsci without seeing him: his slab is low, horizontal and not at all conspicuous.

Guided Tours of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The cemetery organizes its own guided tours and gives the contact details on the official website. Anyone who prefers professional accompaniment, in Italian or English, and wants to stitch this place together with the Pyramid, Testaccio and the Aventine in a single morning, will find the licensed guides and tour leaders of the TourLeaderPro network in Rome, who work on itineraries built to measure for private and corporate groups. For a quote or a specific request, write from the TourLeaderPro contact page.

Accessibility of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The Old Part is flat and accessible. The New Zone is on a slope, with narrow paths, gravel in some stretches, steps and terracing: whoever moves in a wheelchair will see a portion of the cemetery well, and not all of it. It's best to write to the administration before the visit to be told the best route.

A Curiosity About the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The real curiosity is not Keats's tomb, which by now is in every guide. It is the fact that the cemetery's most famous phrase was written to be forgotten. John Keats dictated his own epitaph as a dying man, in February 1821, and demanded that his name not appear on the tombstone: here lies one whose name was writ in water. It was a surrender. The critics' savage reviews had convinced him that he was a literary failure, and he wanted a stone that told the world nothing of him would remain. His friends, Joseph Severn and Charles Brown, obeyed to the letter and disobeyed in substance: they added above the phrase a Greek lyre with broken strings and an inscription that explained the context, laying the blame on the English critics. Severn regretted it for the rest of his life and would have wanted to remove that explanation.

The result is that on the most-read tombstone of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome two opposite wills coexist: that of the poet, who wanted to disappear, and that of the friends, who wanted to blame someone. And it is precisely that nameless stone that has brought millions of people here over two centuries. If you need a lesson on the unpredictability of fame, it is carved in marble three meters from the perimeter wall. Add the detail of the date: February 24 against the 23rd of the biographies, because of the different way of counting days between Rome and England. A poet who wanted to be anonymous, with the wrong epitaph and the wrong date, became the reason there is a literary tourism in Testaccio.

Something Nobody Tells You About the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

That this cemetery was never granted by anyone. It is the thing that surprises groups the most, and that dismantles the comforting narrative of the enlightened pope who gives a piece of lawn to the Protestants. There was no act of concession, no bull, no rescript. There was, in 1671, a resolution of the Holy Office that merely spared non-Catholics who died in the city the disgrace of burial in the Muro Torto field together with prostitutes and sinners. The rest was done by those concerned, burying at night, in secret, in public land where sheep grazed, without tombstones for the first decades, and counting on the fact that nobody felt like dealing with it.

The burial ground therefore developed without official recognition, and only toward the end of the eighteenth century did the authorities begin to deal with it, assigning functions to the Conservators of the Capitoline Hill and, on the ecclesiastical side, to the Vicar of Rome and the Vice-Gerent. Very mild controls. A real custodian arrived only in the 1820s. The second part of this story is even less known: the reason nobody protested is that to Roman Catholics an open-air cemetery was of no interest at all. The prestigious burial was inside the church, under the floor, near the altar. Ending up in bare earth was considered a makeshift solution, not a privilege. The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome was born in indifference, and it is this indifference that allowed it to become what it is.

The Advice I Give You for Visiting the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Come early in the morning, right at opening, on a weekday, and bring a book. I don't say it as a pose: this is one of the very few places in Rome where the time spent sitting counts more than the time spent walking. You do the full tour in 40 minutes and leave with nothing. If you sit an hour on the bench in the Old Part, with the Pyramid in front of you, you leave with something. The best light for the New Zone is between 10 and noon, when the cypresses cast long shadows on the marble and the Angel of Grief takes the cut of light it was sculpted for.

Second piece of advice, a practical one. Decide beforehand on three tombs to look for, not 20: the cemetery is small but extremely dense, and treasure-hunt mode ruins everything. Third: pair it well. The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome on its own is half a morning. With the Pyramid, Porta San Paolo, Monte dei Cocci and the Testaccio Market it becomes a full and coherent day, all on foot, without ever taking a vehicle. Fourth, and it counts double: avoid Saturday afternoon and rainy days. With wet grass the Old Part becomes slippery and the paths of the New Zone turn muddy. Fifth: if you have only an hour and must choose between here and the catacombs of Rome, know that they are opposite experiences. There you go down, here you stay in the open air: whoever suffers from closed spaces has their natural alternative here.

Last piece of advice, the most important. Don't come hunting for thrills. There is nothing macabre in this place, and whoever looks for it finds it ugly. It is a garden with very beautiful inscriptions, in which some people still mourn their dead: respect is not a formality of the rules, it is the condition for understanding anything about it.

Another Well-Known Fact, Yet Rarely Cited

That Percy Bysshe Shelley is buried here many know. That his heart is not here very few know, and almost nobody tells what really happened on the beach at Viareggio. Shelley drowned on July 8, 1822 off the Tuscan coast while taking the Ariel back toward San Terenzo, with Edward Williams and the sailor Charles Vivian. The bodies resurfaced 10 days later. The health regulations forbade burying anyone who had been recovered from the sea, and so Byron, Trelawny and Leigh Hunt organized in August 1822 a cremation on the beach, with incense, perfumes and aromatic oils poured over the body, in a staging of Greek taste that Trelawny then told for the rest of his life.

The ashes arrived in Rome and were laid in the Non-Catholic Cemetery, under a slab with two words carved on it, Cor Cordium, and three lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest on the sea-change. The heart, according to a tradition confirmed by Byron in a letter, is said to have remained almost intact. Trelawny handed it to Mary Shelley in a wooden box, together with the ashes and bones, and Mary kept it with her until her own death. It was buried in England, at Bournemouth. Here instead rests, in the same area, his son William, who died in Rome in 1819 at the age of three: it was that bereavement that tied the Shelleys to this lawn, even before the father ended up here. And there is a third chapter nobody cites: Edward John Trelawny, the man of the pyre, immediately bought the place next to his friend's and was buried there in 1881, 59 years later. He was 88 and had waited half a century to lie down there.

The Right Photo to Take at the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The photograph that counts is just one, and it is not Keats's tomb. Stand in the Old Part, on the edge of the lawn, crouch down to the height of the tombstones and frame vertically: in the foreground the grass with two or three pale stones, in the center the row of cypresses, at the upper right the white apex of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius peeking out beyond the Roman wall. Inside a single frame there are 2,000 years: the tomb of an Augustan priest, the Aurelian Walls of the third century, an eighteenth-century cemetery and a cat. With the morning light the marble of the pyramid turns almost blue, and the cypresses give back the depth that is lost at noon.

The second possible photograph is the Angel of Grief, and it is harder than it looks. Straight on doesn't work: the angel flattens out and looks like a postcard. Turn to three quarters on the right, rest the framing on the diagonal of the wings and keep the face hidden inside the arm, just as Story sculpted it. No flash, ever. The third, for those who love detail: the inscriptions in Cyrillic and Greek in the New Zone, photographed with the brick wall blurred behind. Non-negotiable rules: no tripods in the middle of the paths, no drones, no filming of funerals or of people visiting family tombs, no posed portraits among the burials. A well-photographed cemetery is a cemetery in which nobody noticed you were photographing.

Some Important Events That Happened Here in History

The first event is 1671, when the resolution of the Holy Office opened the way to non-Catholic burials under the Pyramid by sparing non-Catholics the Muro Torto field. The second is 1738, with the death of the Oxford student Langton, fallen from a horse at 25: his is one of the first sepulchral memorials of the place, and his tomb came back to light during the excavations of 1928 near the Cestian Pyramid, with the intact inscription that is read today on the tombstone. The third is 1803, when Wilhelm von Humboldt, Prussia's minister to the Holy See, obtained a plot for his family and buried a son there: of that private enclosure some pillars remain, today incorporated in the cemetery area.

The year 1821 brings two events in the same year. In February the burial of John Keats, three days after his death, with the funeral at dawn. And the affair of Sir Walter Synod, who obtained permission to bury his daughter in full daylight and had himself escorted by a squad of guards to prevent raids by fanatics. 1822 is the year of Shelley, with the ashes arrived from Viareggio. 1824 sees the digging of the ditch around the old part and the death of Rosa Bathurst, drowned in the Tiber, whose epitaph is one of the most read in the cemetery. In October 1830 August von Goethe dies of smallpox in Rome, and it is the German artists of the city who take care of the burial. Thorvaldsen sculpts the medallion, his father dictates the Latin epitaph.

1870 changes the rules: with the end of temporal power the bans on placing crosses and inscriptions fall. 1894 is the year in which William Wetmore Story sculpts the Angel of Grief for his wife Emelyn, the last work of his life. In 1918 inhumations are forbidden. In the summer of 1938 the ashes of Antonio Gramsci arrive, dead on April 27, 1937, brought here from the Verano. On July 18, 2019 the remains of Andrea Camilleri are brought there. In 2023 Giorgio Napolitano, President of the Republic, is buried, and in 2024 his wife Clio Maria Bittoni. Between one event and the next run three and a half centuries of European history, all inside a hectare of lawn.

Who Has Passed Through the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Even before those who rest here, what counts are those who passed through while alive. Percy Bysshe Shelley passed through in 1819, to bury his son William, who died in Rome at three: he came back three years later, reduced to ashes, and was laid in the same area. Edward John Trelawny passed through, the adventurer who had organized the pyre on the beach at Viareggio in August 1822 together with Byron and Leigh Hunt: he bought the place next to his friend and came back to occupy it in 1881, at 88. Joseph Severn passed through, the painter who had assisted Keats to the last breath in the house in Piazza di Spagna: he stayed in Rome for the rest of his life, went so far as to serve as British consul in the city and was buried beside the poet in 1879, 58 years later.

The German artists of the Rome of 1830 passed through, who took care of the burial of August von Goethe, dead of smallpox, and Bertel Thorvaldsen passed through, who sculpted the portrait medallion for that tomb. Johann Peter Eckermann passed through, the traveling companion who had had to stop ill in Milan. Generations of Grand Tour travelers passed through, for whom the cemetery of the English under the Pyramid was as expected a stop as the Forum, and the foreign diplomatic representations that have custody of the cemetery and share its upkeep pass through it today.

In the twentieth century the passage becomes political and literary at once, and there is one name above all: Pier Paolo Pasolini. In front of Gramsci's tomb he wrote Le ceneri di Gramsci, the long poem that gives its title to the collection published by Garzanti in 1957 and awarded that year at the Viareggio. It is built as an imaginary dialogue with the dead man, in Dantean tercets bent to the Pascolian lesson, and inside it are the cemetery, the pyramid and the evenings of Testaccio with the boys playing. Whoever has read those verses walks on this lawn in a different way, and notices it immediately. Then comes whoever looks for Gregory Corso, the poet of the Beat Generation who wanted to end up on this lawn beside the English Romantics, whoever looks for Lindsay Kemp, the choreographer who trained David Bowie and Kate Bush, whoever looks for Dario Bellezza and with him the literary Rome of the 1970s. And every day come the students of English literature, the Romans who come to read in peace and those who arrive from far away to find a family name on a tombstone written in a language that almost nobody in Rome reads.

The Testaccio Rione Around the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The twentieth rione takes its name from Monte Testaccio, the artificial hill 35 meters high formed of amphora shards: about 25 million containers accumulated over the centuries and coming from the Emporium, the river port that received marble, grain and wine from Ostia. The goods went up the Tiber on barges towed by buffaloes until 1842, when steam arrived. The empty amphorae were broken, stacked in pyramid formations and covered with lime to avoid the bad smells of fermentation. In the caves dug inside that mountain of shards wine was stored, and it still is.

After 1870 the master plan assigned the area to industrial activities, and Testaccio became a planned working-class neighborhood, a unique case in Rome of programmed urbanization: houses for workers, railway, slaughterhouse, gasworks, wholesale markets. From the 1960s the industries closed one after another and the spaces were converted: the former slaughterhouse houses the museum and university classrooms, the power plant on Via Ostiense has become the Centrale Montemartini, where ancient statues coexist with diesel engines, and the wholesale markets moved out of town. What remains is a genuinely working-class rione, tied to football Rome and continually used by Italian cinema. The story of the neighborhood told street by street is in the Museo diffuso del rione Testaccio.

What to See Near the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Within a 10-minute walk there is more material than you find in many entire historic centers. The Cestian Pyramid is pressed against the wall of the cemetery. Porta San Paolo, the ancient Porta Ostiensis, houses the Museo della via Ostiense inside its towers. Monte dei Cocci is five minutes away, with its caves and its cellars. The Nuovo Mercato Testaccio is the right place to eat in mid-morning or at lunch, without spending much and without traps. Going up the Aventine you reach the Basilica of Santa Sabina, with its fifth-century wooden door, and the Orange Garden. Going down toward the Tiber and then north opens the Circus Maximus.

Going south instead along Via Ostiense you come to the Centrale Montemartini and, farther on, the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. Anyone who wants to compare this cemetery with the other great monumental burial ground of the city can go up to the Verano Cemetery, in San Lorenzo: two opposite ways of treating death, one intimate and horizontal, the other monumental and vertical. For contemporary art, the MACRO on Via Nizza keeps the thread with the Rome of today.

When to Go to the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The best period is spring, between March and May, when the lawn of the Old Part is at its peak and the pomegranates have not yet fruited but everything else blooms. The second period is October, with low light and warm colors on the brick walls. The Roman summer is hard here: the cemetery has shade but the heat of July and August, in a basin without wind, is felt in full, and it's best to go right at opening. Winter has the advantage of absolute emptiness: with the cold, on weekdays, you are almost alone, and the place gains enormously.

Anyone arriving from abroad and thinking in English will find the general overview of the city in the guide best things to do in Rome and, if they have three days to spend, in the itinerary Rome in 3 days from ItalyPlanner: the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome fits well into the half-day dedicated to the Aventine and Testaccio.

The worst time is the weekend in the middle of the day in high season, when organized groups pile up in the Old Part and the silence goes out the window. The hours and closing days are indicated on the cemetery's official website: they change during the year and have to be checked before leaving, because a closed door after a trip to Testaccio is a day ruined for nothing.

The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome with Children

It works, under two conditions. The first is to prepare the ground: you explain before going in that it is a cemetery, that there are families visiting and that you speak softly. The second is to give a task. You ask the children who read to find how many different languages they can recognize on the tombstones, and it is a game that keeps them busy a good 20 minutes and that teaches something true about Europe. For the youngest, the cats and the pyramid are enough. The story of Keats, a poet who died at 25 and wanted a tomb without a name, works very well over the age of 10, and that of August von Goethe, a son who died before his famous father, leaves a mark on teenagers. It is not a place for nimble strollers: the New Zone has narrow paths and gravel.

How Much It Costs to Visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

There is no ticket in the classic sense: at the entrance you leave a contribution for the upkeep of the place, which has no Italian public funding and is supported by the foreign representations and by visitors' donations. The suggested amount, any reductions and the arrangements for guided tours are indicated on the cemetery's official website. A piece of advice from someone who works next door: leave a little more than you would have paid for a ticket. A mown lawn, tended cypresses, restored marble and continuous guarding cost money, and without those donations a heritage like this degrades quickly.

Quick Questions About the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Where is the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

At Via Caio Cestio 6, in the Testaccio rione, hard against the Aurelian Walls and the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, a few steps from Porta San Paolo and Piazzale Ostiense.

How to get to the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome by public transport

Metro Line B, Piramide stop, three minutes on foot. At the same hub arrive the Roma-Lido railway, tram 3 at Piazzale Ostiense and several ATAC bus lines. From Termini it is about 10 minutes by subway.

How much does it cost to enter the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

You don't buy a ticket: you leave an offering for the upkeep. The suggested amount is indicated on the cemetery's official website.

What are the hours of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The hours vary during the year and the last entry is earlier than closing time. The updated calendar, including closing days, is published on the cemetery's official website and has to be checked before the visit.

Do I need to book to visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

For an individual visit, no. For groups, guided tours and archive research on the burials, it is better to write in advance to the cemetery administration.

How long does the visit to the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome last

From 40 minutes for the essential tour to an hour and a half for a visit done at leisure. Those who photograph take two hours.

Can you take photographs at the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Personal photographs are allowed, without flash and without intruding on family tombs. Professional photo shoots, video recording and drones have to be arranged with the administration.

Is the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome wheelchair accessible

The Old Part, being flat, yes. The New Zone is terraced, with narrow paths, gravel and steps, and remains in large part difficult. It's best to contact the administration before going.

Where is the tomb of John Keats

In the Old Part, the open lawn under the Pyramid, next to that of Joseph Severn. The tombstone does not bear the poet's name, but the phrase about the name writ in water.

What is written on Keats's tomb

Here lies one whose name was writ in water, the epitaph wanted by Keats himself, surmounted by a Greek lyre with broken strings. The date carved is February 24, 1821, while death occurred on the 23rd.

Where are Shelley's ashes buried

In the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, with the epitaph Cor Cordium and three lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest. The heart instead was kept by Mary Shelley and buried in England, at Bournemouth.

Is it true that Shelley's heart is in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

No. It is a widespread confusion: the ashes and bones rest here, the heart stayed with Mary Shelley and ended up in England.

Where is the tomb of Antonio Gramsci

In the lower part of the cemetery, with a sober horizontal slab and an urn. The ashes were transferred there from the Verano in the summer of 1938.

Why is Gramsci buried in a non-Catholic cemetery

Because the concession was made possible by his marriage to a Russian woman, Julca Schucht, according to the criterion that opens the cemetery to Italians who were in some way foreign in their own country.

Who are the Italians buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Among others Antonio Gramsci, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Dario Bellezza, Emilio Lussu and Joyce Salvadori Lussu, Luce d'Eramo, Amelia Rosselli, Antonio Labriola, Bruno Pontecorvo, Arnoldo Foà, Miriam Mafai, Manfredo Tafuri, Andrea Camilleri and Giorgio Napolitano.

Where is the Angel of Grief

In the New Zone, on the tomb of the Story family. William Wetmore Story sculpted it in 1894 for his wife Emelyn, and he, his wife and their son Joseph rest there.

How many cats are there in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The number changes constantly. They are looked after by volunteers and live free among the tombs: you look at them and photograph them, you don't feed them and you don't pick them up.

Are there still new burials in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Extremely rare. Inhumations have been forbidden since 1918 and the available space is almost exhausted: concessions are exceptional even for foreigners.

What is the difference between the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome and the Verano

The Verano is the great municipal monumental cemetery, vast and vertical, with chapels and aediculae. This one is barely a hectare of lawn and cypresses, horizontal, international and non-Catholic. They are two opposite ideas of death and memory.

Can you enter the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome with a dog

Better not to count on it: inside the enclosure lives a population of free cats and the place remains a working cemetery. The visiting rules are indicated on the cemetery's official website.

Is the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome suitable for children

Yes, if prepared. Recognizing the alphabets on the tombstones, the cats and the silhouette of the Pyramid work. It is not a place for running or for bulky strollers.

What is the best time to visit the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Spring, between March and May, and then October. In summer it's best to arrive at opening. In winter, on weekdays, you are almost alone.

What to see near the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

The Cestian Pyramid, Porta San Paolo with the Museo della via Ostiense, Monte dei Cocci, the Nuovo Mercato Testaccio, the Aventine with Santa Sabina and the Orange Garden, and farther south the Centrale Montemartini.

Is the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome a museum

No. It is a working cemetery, run by the foreign diplomatic representations, with recent burials and families who return to it. It is visited with the respect that this entails.

Can you look up information on a person buried here

The cemetery administration keeps the burial registers and answers research requests: the contact details are on the official website.

The Last Word on the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Among the places of Rome, this is the one where people talk least on the way out. Not out of sadness: out of saturation. In one hectare there are an Augustan tomb, a stretch of third-century walls, an English poet of 25, a Sardinian philosopher dead in a clinic under guard, a marble angel that has stopped consoling and some 20 alphabets. No other Roman walk puts so much history on you in so little space, and none other asks for as much good manners to be understood.

The final advice, before passing through the gate: don't count the tombs. Choose three, stop in front of each long enough to read everything that is written, and forget the rest. This place doesn't reward those who see everything, it rewards those who stop. The rest you find on the other side of the wall, where Rome starts making noise again.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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