Certosa di Bologna

Certosa of Bologna
Colombario's Hall at La Certosa of Bologna.
Details
Established	1334
Standort	Bologna
Land	Italien
Typ	Public
Owned by	Bologna
Website	Official website

The Certosa di Bologna is a former Carthusian monastery (or charterhouse) in Bologna, central Italy, which was founded in 1334 and suppressed in 1797. In 1801 it became the city’s Monumental Cemetery which would be much praised by Byron and others. In 1869 an Etruscan necropolis, which had been in use from the sixth to the third centuries BCE, was discovered here.

The Certosa is located just outside the walls of the city, near the Stadio Renato Dall'Ara, at the foot of the Monte della Guardia and the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca.

History

The public cemetery was established in 1801 using the pre-existing structure of the Certosa di San Girolamo di Casara, founded in the middle of the 14th century that was closed by Napoleon in 1797. The passion of the local nobility and aristocracy for monumental family tombs transformed the Certosa in an "open air museum," a stage of the Italian grand tour: it was visited by Byron, Dickens, Theodor Mommsen, and Stendhal. In particular the third cloister (or that of the Chapel) is noteworthy a tour of neoclassicisminspired structures with simbology from the age of enlightenment. Some tombs are painted in tempera, others are made of stucco and scagliola.

Church

Within the church it is worth noting the triptych of the Passion of the Christ, a work of Bartolomeo Cesi and the wooden inlaid choir restored by Biagio De' Marchi in 1538 after a fire started by the Landsknechts of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Other highlights are the paintings dedicated to episodes of the life of Christ, with the dimensions of around 450x350 cm, which were commissioned in the middle of the 17th century to Giovanni Andrea Sirani, Elisabetta Sirani, Francesco Gessi (The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1645), Giovanni Maria Galli da Bibiena, Lorenzo Pasinelli, Domenico Maria Canuti, and the Neapolitan Nunzio Rossi. There are paintings of several Carthusian martyrs including the Englishmen Blessed William Exmew, Blessed Thomas Johnson, Blessed Richard Bere, and Blessed Thomas Green.

Other works by Antonio and Bartolomeo Vivarini, Ludovico and Agostino Carracci, in addition to Guercino, were transferred during the reign of Napoleon to the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.

Spaces

An aspect that distinguishes the Certosa of Bologna from other monumental cemeteries of Europe is derived from the complex articulation of its use of space. To the original convent nucleus were added lodges, rooms, and porticos that recreate glimpses of a setting that recalls the city of the "living". Even the porticoed eastern entrance of the cemetery, which is linked to the one that leads to the Sanctuary of San Luca with only a small break, creates the continuity between necropolis and city.

The discovery of an Etruscan necropolis during archeological excavations organized by the engineer Antonio Zannoni in order to extend the cemetery at the end of the 19th century are now in the Civic Archeological Museum of Bologna.

Famous tombs

Among those buried in the Certosa are the following:

• Farinelli (1705-1782), singer
• Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802), painter, tomb
• Mauro Gandolfi (1764-1834), painter
• Giuseppe Grabinski (1771-1843), Polish military officer
• Isabella Colbran (1785-1845), singer and wife of Gioacchino Rossini
• Letizia Murat (1802-1859), daughter of Joachim Murat, tomb
• Gioacchino Napoleone Pepoli (1825-1881), Italian senator
• Nicola Zanichelli (1819-1884), publisher
• Marco Minghetti (1818-1886), Italian prime minister
• Severino Ferrari (1856-1905), poet
• Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907), poet
• Alfieri Maserati (1887-1932), car manufacturer
• Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), composer
• Edoardo Weber (1889-1945), engineer, tomb
• Assunta Viscardi (1890-1947), school teacher in the process of beatification
• Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), painter
• Bruno Saetti (1902-1984), painter
• Riccardo Bacchelli (1891-1985), novelist
• Ferruccio Lamborghini(1916-1993), industrialist
• Farpi Vignoli (1907-1997), sculptor, tomb

See also

• Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, in Genoa
• Cimitero Monumentale di Milano

External links

• Comune of Bologna [1].
• Official website [2].
• Link to the third cloister [3].
• Link to the fallen during the resistance of World War II [4].
• Link to fallen during World War I [5].