The Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome was granted in 1716 by Pope Clement XI (1700-1721) to members of the Stuart court exiled from England. For this reason, it is often still called the “English cemetery”: many Protestants are buried here including travellers who died while on the Grand Tour. Later on, the extension of the burial permits to all non-catholics gave the place another nickname, “the cemetery of the artists and poets”.
The area is adjacent to the Pyramid of Caius Cestius (12 BCE) but a part that was enclosed within the Aurelian Walls in the 3rd century CE where it became a kind of fortress near Porta San Paolo, an important Southern entrance to the city. For this reason, the graves are gathered in a narrow space backing up to the walls which also serve as the boundary of the cemetery.
Great writers are buried here, both English like John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Italian like Carlo Emilio Gadda and Andrea Camilleri, plus significant figures from Italy’s history such as Antonio Gramsci, whose grave features Pier Paolo Pasolini’s splendid poem entitled Le ceneri di Gramsci (Gramsci’s Ashes): “A red rag like those scarves/knotted to the necks of partisans/and, close to the urn on the waxen earth/ other reds, two geraniums./There you are, banished and with cold un-catholic elegance indexed among the foreign dead.”
Roma Lazio Film Commission
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Phone: +39 06 72286273/320
Fax: +39 06 722 1127
Email: info@romalaziofilmcommission.it
