Description
The Monumental Cemetery of Messina, the Gran Camposanto, is one of Europe's great monumental cemeteries: 22 hectares of avenues, gardens and tombs opposite Villa Dante, near the center. It was conceived from the start as a park, and you visit it like an open-air museum.
Beyond the Porta Maggiore opens a large flower-filled forecourt: the carefully arranged flowers form the city's coat of arms in its colors, yellow and red on a white field, under the words Orate pro defunctis.
On either side begin the two avenues of the monumental gallery, with the tombs of Messina's notable citizens. On the left politicians, patriots and soldiers; on the right writers and jurists, including the politician Gaetano Martino.
The cemetery gathers much of Messina's neoclassical sculpture and architecture, alongside Art Nouveau and neo-Gothic tombs set among the greenery. Sculptors such as Lio Gangeri, Gregorio Zappalà and Mario Rutelli worked here, as did architects such as Giovan Battista Filippo Basile.
In the highest part, at the end of a tree-lined avenue, stands the Cenobio, a neo-Gothic chapel also called the conventino: it was the church, the offices and the home of the chaplain, who was also the cemetery's director. The open ground around it is full of late 19th-century tombs.
The Famedio, designed by Leone Savoja, is the mausoleum of the city's great figures, crossed by an underground gallery like a catacomb. The 1908 earthquake brought down its roof, which was never rebuilt.
The English Cemetery is a world apart. It began in the port area, granted by King Ferdinand IV to the English sailors who had come to help the Bourbons against Napoleon; in 1942 its 280 tombs were moved here.
Here lie the foreign families who played a leading role in the economy of 19th-century Messina: English, German, Swiss, Danish, Russian. Among the finest monuments are those of the banker Federico Grill and of the Sandersons, major producers of citrus derivatives.
The cemetery was born of an epidemic. In 1854 cholera was ravaging Messina, and the city council held a competition for a new cemetery. It was won by the Messina architect Leone Savoja, but work really began only in 1865.
Its inauguration, in 1872, was the occasion to bring back from Turin the remains of the patriot Giuseppe La Farina, buried in the Famedio. Later came the victims of the 1908 earthquake: entire families rest on open ground surrounded by chapels.
Don't miss
• The flower-filled forecourt of the Porta Maggiore.
• The monumental gallery.
• The Cenobio.
• The English Cemetery.
Did you know?
• It is the only Sicilian cemetery protected as an architectural heritage site, since 2002.
• In 1925 King George V and Queen Mary visited the English Cemetery.
• Leone Savoja died young, and the most monumental part of the Famedio was never built.
Beyond the Porta Maggiore opens a large flower-filled forecourt: the carefully arranged flowers form the city's coat of arms in its colors, yellow and red on a white field, under the words Orate pro defunctis.
On either side begin the two avenues of the monumental gallery, with the tombs of Messina's notable citizens. On the left politicians, patriots and soldiers; on the right writers and jurists, including the politician Gaetano Martino.
The cemetery gathers much of Messina's neoclassical sculpture and architecture, alongside Art Nouveau and neo-Gothic tombs set among the greenery. Sculptors such as Lio Gangeri, Gregorio Zappalà and Mario Rutelli worked here, as did architects such as Giovan Battista Filippo Basile.
In the highest part, at the end of a tree-lined avenue, stands the Cenobio, a neo-Gothic chapel also called the conventino: it was the church, the offices and the home of the chaplain, who was also the cemetery's director. The open ground around it is full of late 19th-century tombs.
The Famedio, designed by Leone Savoja, is the mausoleum of the city's great figures, crossed by an underground gallery like a catacomb. The 1908 earthquake brought down its roof, which was never rebuilt.
The English Cemetery is a world apart. It began in the port area, granted by King Ferdinand IV to the English sailors who had come to help the Bourbons against Napoleon; in 1942 its 280 tombs were moved here.
Here lie the foreign families who played a leading role in the economy of 19th-century Messina: English, German, Swiss, Danish, Russian. Among the finest monuments are those of the banker Federico Grill and of the Sandersons, major producers of citrus derivatives.
The cemetery was born of an epidemic. In 1854 cholera was ravaging Messina, and the city council held a competition for a new cemetery. It was won by the Messina architect Leone Savoja, but work really began only in 1865.
Its inauguration, in 1872, was the occasion to bring back from Turin the remains of the patriot Giuseppe La Farina, buried in the Famedio. Later came the victims of the 1908 earthquake: entire families rest on open ground surrounded by chapels.
Don't miss
• The flower-filled forecourt of the Porta Maggiore.
• The monumental gallery.
• The Cenobio.
• The English Cemetery.
Did you know?
• It is the only Sicilian cemetery protected as an architectural heritage site, since 2002.
• In 1925 King George V and Queen Mary visited the English Cemetery.
• Leone Savoja died young, and the most monumental part of the Famedio was never built.