Certosa di Bologna

The Certosa di San Girolamo di Casara was founded in 1334 outside the city walls, as required by the rule of the Carthusian monks. After the suppression of the monastery during the Napoleonic era, in 1801 the city turned it into its municipal cemetery, one of the first in Italy, reusing cloisters and cells.

Already in the 19th century, travellers called it a cemetery that can be called a museum, and Byron and Leopardi came here. Bolognese families commissioned tombs from the greatest sculptors of the time: along cloisters, loggias and halls you'll find neoclassical, Romantic, Art Nouveau and 20th-century monuments, as well as frescoes that imitate architecture and sculpture.

Famous figures are buried here: the poet Giosuè Carducci, the singer Farinelli, the composer Ottorino Respighi, the painter Giorgio Morandi and the singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla. In the church of San Girolamo, great altarpieces from 17th-century Bologna remain.

The cemetery is connected to the city by a long portico, begun in 1811, which joins the one of San Luca: it is one of the twelve sections of the porticoes of Bologna that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1869, excavating here, a large Etruscan necropolis was also found, which gave its name to a phase of Etruscan civilisation, the Certosa phase.