Ettore Focardi

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Funerary monument to Ettore Focardi, 1913
Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery)
Via delle Porte Sante
Florence, May 2022

Cimitero delle Porte Sante

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Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery)
Via delle Porte Sante
Florence, May 2022

“Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery) is a monumental cemetery in Florence located within the fortified bastion of the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte. The idea of a burial site near San Miniato was conceived around 1837, although the camposanto was inaugurated eleven years later, in 1848. The project, originally entrusted to architect Niccolò Matas (the designer of the facade of the Basilica of Santa Croce), was enlarged and in 1864 Mariano Falcini used the area of the sixteenth-century fortress lying around the church. The project of the new cemetery grew parallel with the development of the new road network, elaborated by Poggi, which, with the opening of the Colli Boulevard and the monumental staircase, created new ways to access the basilica.” (Cimitero delle Porte Sante, Wikipedia)

Augusto Desideri

Funerary monument of Augusto Desideri (1899-1914)
Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery)
Via delle Porte Sante
Florence, December 2021

Sleeping lion

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Sleeping lion by Italo Vagnetti, 1906
Cappella Fenci (Fenci chapel)
Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery)
Via delle Porte Sante
Florence, December 2018

Ruspoli Chapel

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Ruspoli Chapel by Giovanni Paciarelli
Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery)
Via delle Porte Sante
Florence, December 2018

“The Porte Sante cemetery surprised visitors with its comingling of styles: it was important to appear, to show the dignity of their own social class. This eclectic mix reveals interesting monuments for the style, for materials and construction methods. One of this examples is the Ruspoli chapel, designed in 1891 by Giovanni Paciarelli, architect sensitive to modernism and designer of Paggi Palace in Florence. The chapel, commissioned by Valsè-Pontellini family, stands out in the landscape for the precious texture of exotic carvings and inlays of polychrome marble, mosaics and historiated glass.” (Ruspoli Chapel, University of Florence)

“Vamba”

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Funerary monument to “Vamba” by Libero Andreotti, 1923
Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery)
Florence, December 2018

“Luigi Bertelli (1858 - 1920), best known as Vamba, was an Italian author, illustrator and journalist. Born in Florence, having completed his studies Bertelli became a railway employer, working first in Rimini and later in Foggia. He later started collaborating with the Roman newspaper Capitan Fracassa and in 1884 he was officially employed as a journalist and caricaturist. He soon adopted the pseudonym ‘Vamba’, named after the clown of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. After collaborating with several newspapers, in 1890 he founded and directed L'O di Giotto, a newspaper close to the radical political positions of Felice Cavallotti, and in 1901 he co-founded the regional newspaper Il Bruscolo. Best known as a children's author, in 1893 Vamba wrote his first pedagogical novel, Ciondolino, and in 1906 he founded and directed until 1911 the nonconformist children magazine Il giornalino della Domenica. Here, he released in sequential installments his best known novel, Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca, the pedagogical and humorous story of a lively 9 year old. In the summer of 1920 he fell ill, dying on 27 November 1920. A funerary monument made by the sculptor Libero Andreotti was inaugurated in Florence on 14 January 1923.” (Vamba, Wikipedia)

Funerary Monument

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Funerary monument to Silvia Marini de Rogati by Mario Moschi, 1948
Cimitero delle Porte Sante (The Sacred Doors Cemetery)
Via delle Porte Sante
Florence, December 2016

Pellegrino Artusi

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Bust on the grave of Pellegrino Artusi by Italo Vagnetti
Porte Sante Cemetery, San Miniato al Monte
Florence, April 2014

“The whole complex is surrounded by defensive walls, originally built hastily by Michelangelo during the siege and in 1553 expanded into a true fortress (fortezza) by Cosimo I de' Medici. The walls now enclose a large cemetery, the Porte Sante, laid out in 1854.” (San Miniato al Monte, Wikipedia)