The Staglieno Cemetery in Genova is quite stunning.
The burial grounds are extensive and those who rest there are allowed thirty years before their remains are removed to make way for new residents.
But what is especially remarkable is the statuary.
We were taken to the Cemetery by Mario who was born in Genoa but who lived for much of his adult life in the USA. Mario is a citizen of a big society, a society that has its roots in both the old world and the new. Mario was especially keen that we should see the tomb of Caterina Campodonico, the nut seller.
When we were in Genova over Christmas and the New Year when we bought chestnuts from the sellers in Piazza Ferrari, we might have bought our chestnuts from Caterina's children or grandchildren.
While she was still alive, she commissioned her own funeral monument and paid it with the money she earned through selling her goods in the streets of Genoa and in Fairs and Street Markets.
The staue is remarkable for the detail of her dress and shawl, the nuts carried on a string around her neck and the two Bagels that she carries, as though, in death she is still plying her trade. A visitor could almost stop her and ask to buy what she is selling, so lifelike is the statue.
Inscribed on the base of the statue is a poem in which she asks for our prayers.
The nut seller is just one, although possibly the best known, of thousands of statues in a remarkable collection of memorials and statues reflecting and memorialising the dead of Genova.
On our visit we saw many famous and not so famous individuals.
In one the deceased was lying on a bed, the bed clothes were so realistic that you could almost have turned the sheets to settle the sleeping figure for the night ahead.
The big society is an intriguing concept because it is so this worldly.
But for many, and not only Christians or people of faith the idea that life in some mysterious way extends beyond this life and into a future existence which is both a mystery and a matter of faith takes the idea of a big society a step further.
Within the Cemetery this faith or hope is extended by the use of artistic language from Neo-classicism to Realism, to Symbolism, through Art Nouveau and Art Deco and on into the more modern examples using photographs to recall and fix the image of the deceased.
Staglieno has been visited and described by artists, writers and philosophers from Mark Twain and Guy de Maupassant to Nietzsche. There is an English section where amongst others is buried the wife of Oscar Wilde who died in Genova.
Staglieno is a Necropolis, a city of the dead.
But it is also a vivid reminder that those, who created in their day, a society that was bustling, entrepenurial, alive and artistic left an amazing legacy that enriched the lives of the generations that followed them.
There is little evidence in the current rhetoric of the big society of great foundations being established in the UK to benefit future generations, with the exception of the Wellcome Trust almost all of the current and future foundations are American, all those bankers bonuses appear to be spent on material rewards rather than benefitting future generations.
If the big society is ever to prove a lasting benefit it needs more than great memorials, otherwise it will sink into the sands of time like Shelleys tragic character Ozymandias:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The burial grounds are extensive and those who rest there are allowed thirty years before their remains are removed to make way for new residents.
But what is especially remarkable is the statuary.
We were taken to the Cemetery by Mario who was born in Genoa but who lived for much of his adult life in the USA. Mario is a citizen of a big society, a society that has its roots in both the old world and the new. Mario was especially keen that we should see the tomb of Caterina Campodonico, the nut seller.
When we were in Genova over Christmas and the New Year when we bought chestnuts from the sellers in Piazza Ferrari, we might have bought our chestnuts from Caterina's children or grandchildren.
While she was still alive, she commissioned her own funeral monument and paid it with the money she earned through selling her goods in the streets of Genoa and in Fairs and Street Markets.
The staue is remarkable for the detail of her dress and shawl, the nuts carried on a string around her neck and the two Bagels that she carries, as though, in death she is still plying her trade. A visitor could almost stop her and ask to buy what she is selling, so lifelike is the statue.
Inscribed on the base of the statue is a poem in which she asks for our prayers.
The nut seller is just one, although possibly the best known, of thousands of statues in a remarkable collection of memorials and statues reflecting and memorialising the dead of Genova.
On our visit we saw many famous and not so famous individuals.
In one the deceased was lying on a bed, the bed clothes were so realistic that you could almost have turned the sheets to settle the sleeping figure for the night ahead.
The big society is an intriguing concept because it is so this worldly.
But for many, and not only Christians or people of faith the idea that life in some mysterious way extends beyond this life and into a future existence which is both a mystery and a matter of faith takes the idea of a big society a step further.
Within the Cemetery this faith or hope is extended by the use of artistic language from Neo-classicism to Realism, to Symbolism, through Art Nouveau and Art Deco and on into the more modern examples using photographs to recall and fix the image of the deceased.
Staglieno has been visited and described by artists, writers and philosophers from Mark Twain and Guy de Maupassant to Nietzsche. There is an English section where amongst others is buried the wife of Oscar Wilde who died in Genova.
Staglieno is a Necropolis, a city of the dead.
But it is also a vivid reminder that those, who created in their day, a society that was bustling, entrepenurial, alive and artistic left an amazing legacy that enriched the lives of the generations that followed them.
There is little evidence in the current rhetoric of the big society of great foundations being established in the UK to benefit future generations, with the exception of the Wellcome Trust almost all of the current and future foundations are American, all those bankers bonuses appear to be spent on material rewards rather than benefitting future generations.
If the big society is ever to prove a lasting benefit it needs more than great memorials, otherwise it will sink into the sands of time like Shelleys tragic character Ozymandias:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
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