Cimitero monumentale della Certosa di Bologna

Cemetery Bologna, Italy

The monumental cemetery of the Certosa di Bologna is located just outside the circle of the city walls, near the Renato Dall'Ara stadium, at the foot of the Guardia hill where the sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca is located. The cemetery of the Certosa di Bologna was founded in 1801 by reusing the structures of the Carthusian convent built starting from 1334 and suppressed in 1796. The church of San Girolamo is an intact testimony of the lost wealth of the convent. On the walls stands out the large cycle of paintings dedicated to the life of Christ, created by the main Bolognese painters of the mid-17th century. The fulcrum of the cemetery is the Third Cloister, a faithful reflection of the local neoclassical culture where the initial painted tombs were replaced by works in stucco and scagliola and - starting from the mid-nineteenth century - in marble and bronze. Over the centuries, the complex is the result of an articulated stratification of loggias, cloisters and buildings ranging from the 15th century to the present, which gradually take on characters of progressive size and monumentality. Inside there is a vast heritage of paintings and sculptures created by almost all the Bolognese artists active in the 19th and 20th centuries, testimony to the complex artistic, historical and intellectual events of Bologna, to which some interventions by contemporary artists have been added in recent years . The nineteenth-century 'foreign' artistic presence is noteworthy, a real benchmark and stimulus for local artists.