Monumental Cemetery of Certosa in Bologna

It's no secret that many of us love to walk around cemeteries. Here you can find both history and beautiful architecture, and all this in the open air. And when several bygone generations of families appear before your eyes, you involuntarily think about the eternal, no matter how grandiloquent it may sound. Pere Lachaise in Paris, Recoleta in Buenos Aires, the Necropolis in St. Petersburg, the Jewish cemetery in Prague and many small necropolises in different European towns. On our last trip to Italy, we managed to walk around the monumental cemetery of Certosa in Bologna.

Certosa Cemetery was once a Carthusian monastery, founded in 1334 and closed in 1797 by order of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1801, the former monastery was converted into a city monumental cemetery. The passion of the Bolognese nobility and officials for the creation of family crypts turned the cemetery into an open-air museum. Certosa di Bologna is included by the Council of Europe in the main route of European cultural heritage sites.

Bologna is considered the city of galleries and arcades - and the Certosa cemetery consists of rows of galleries containing crypts and columbariums.

It’s better not to make my mistakes and not go without a map, because the endless galleries with transitions one into the other create a feeling that you will never get out of here, and the absence of people around brings a not very pleasant feeling of anxiety.

Although the Internet gives information that there are tourist tours of the Certosa cemetery, I did not meet a single person, except for the employees at the entrance.

In such rooms there is another level below, a staircase leads there, and the light turns on automatically, triggered by the sound of footsteps.

Now imagine: no one around, and suddenly the light turns on in the crypt! Scary? I really