Saturday was shiny. We bought @ EUR4,50 two 24 hour transit passes just across the street and traveled first out to the Staglieno Cemetery and back, then to Via XX Settembre to get a SIM for phone, then to seaside Boccadasse, then to the Brignole station from where one stop on a long distance train to the Piazza Principe where intent upon walking the length of the famous Via Balbi but diverted to ride the Ascensore Montegalletto, videos in previous post. A walk around rim at that level, to lunch in an unexpected very local cafe with lightest imaginable food and family atmosphere, before riding the Zecca-Righi funicolare to our front door.
Cimitero Staglieno
This is up high to the east in the city.
An email from Kim had drawn attention to it as reported in Atlas Obscura. Wikipedia will tell you that the widow of Oscar Wilde is buried there and English Wikipedia mentions her ahead of heroes of Italian unification.
We have found that cemeteries in Italy have a lot of character and stories to tell.
This Staglieno cemetery perhaps reflects something about Genova. The wealthy who lived here in the end of the 1700s resisted having a cemetery in their front yard, they also were alarmed when Napoleon wanted them down in the (plague and cholera risky) city where they could be watched. Delaying the cemetery towards the mid 1800s.
I asked the driver where it was and with a grin he said "here!" And we realised that as with other cemeteries in Italy but here large scale, it has a penitentiary look.
Inside there are arcades of monumental things.
But also, right in the middle of the entrance, a pallet of things like big empty cement bags. These are, as specified, and as provided for under the specified regulations, bags for urban refuse, "from exhumation and extombation" ... as explained, ordinary folk get 10 or 30 years in the ground.
Grander folk get a longer time. As to be seen in images. Grander sculpture rendered a bit goth by long accumulated thick dust. Simpler graves for those who pay by the hour. Which brought to my mind that down in the centre where we are living, we are on the streets of elegance, below us in a bowl down to the harbour is a maze of interesting narrow winding streets and upwards narrower lanes with often enough working women bright dressed leaning on walls or meandering even at 10am. "It is a seaport after all" remarked Helen, whose earliest workplace was in its foundation days on the first Sydney 24 hour sexual assault and incest team, where met a number of working women who came for support. And where no client ever succeeded in any legal process... My point being, at least in a metaphor, how even in death there are those who display their relationships and those who just pay for a bit of time.
Cimitero Staglieno
This is up high to the east in the city.
An email from Kim had drawn attention to it as reported in Atlas Obscura. Wikipedia will tell you that the widow of Oscar Wilde is buried there and English Wikipedia mentions her ahead of heroes of Italian unification.
We have found that cemeteries in Italy have a lot of character and stories to tell.
This Staglieno cemetery perhaps reflects something about Genova. The wealthy who lived here in the end of the 1700s resisted having a cemetery in their front yard, they also were alarmed when Napoleon wanted them down in the (plague and cholera risky) city where they could be watched. Delaying the cemetery towards the mid 1800s.I asked the driver where it was and with a grin he said "here!" And we realised that as with other cemeteries in Italy but here large scale, it has a penitentiary look.
Inside there are arcades of monumental things.But also, right in the middle of the entrance, a pallet of things like big empty cement bags. These are, as specified, and as provided for under the specified regulations, bags for urban refuse, "from exhumation and extombation" ... as explained, ordinary folk get 10 or 30 years in the ground.
Grander folk get a longer time. As to be seen in images. Grander sculpture rendered a bit goth by long accumulated thick dust. Simpler graves for those who pay by the hour. Which brought to my mind that down in the centre where we are living, we are on the streets of elegance, below us in a bowl down to the harbour is a maze of interesting narrow winding streets and upwards narrower lanes with often enough working women bright dressed leaning on walls or meandering even at 10am. "It is a seaport after all" remarked Helen, whose earliest workplace was in its foundation days on the first Sydney 24 hour sexual assault and incest team, where met a number of working women who came for support. And where no client ever succeeded in any legal process... My point being, at least in a metaphor, how even in death there are those who display their relationships and those who just pay for a bit of time.
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| Perpetual graves of those "fallen for liberty" |
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| photographing the admiral |
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| You will see in this how the dust of ages has given added relief to the sculptures |
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| We are going today, Monday, to the Palazzo Parodi, just along the street, in Via Garibaldi. Still in private ownership, bought by them in the 1800s from Lercari. The article at link speaks of the house as "a triumph of aristocratic pride" |
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| Requiem without words |
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