Keats in Rome and the "Protestant Cemetery"

Heard melodies are sweet,

but those unheard are sweeter.

~John Keats

Cimitero Acattolico

(Non-Catholic Cemetery)

founded 1734

Also called

Cimitero degli Inglesi

(Englishment's Cemetery)

On December 3rd, I looked at the weather channel app, on my iPhone, and it was going to be a perfectly clear day! Cold, but clear! The plan was to meet up with my new friend, Dawn. She's the American I'd met up with, and who had taken me to the amazing murals, at the monastery, at Trinità dei Monti.

We were supposed to meet at the Piramide Metro stop, in the morning. Turns out her husband's co-op does the landscape work at the famous Protestant Cemetery, in Rome, where poets Keats and Shelley are buried.

It was a crisp, gorgeous morning. Everything was lush and beautiful from the rain, and the lady who runs the place (an English woman) Amanda Thursfield, couldn't have been more lovely, explaining the cemetery and it's ... residents? 

 On the lovely stone, below...

Weeping may endure for a night,

but joy cometh in the morning.

~Psalm 30:5

It seems like a small, intimate, space but there are about 4,000 graves, at the cemetery, including many artists, diplomats from around the world, well known writers, architects, scientists, composers, and the Bulgari family. Although, it was originally created as a place to bury foreign Protestants and people of Eastern Orthodox faiths, it was broadened to include other faiths, from Buddhism to Islam.

Grave, below, of Clara Woolson Benedict, her sister Constance Fenimore Woolson and her Daughter Clare Rathbone Benedict.

Constance, was an american writer, of poetry, fiction and travel narratives, died in Venice, in 1894. Her sister, Clara Benedict, wrote in a letter in 1908 ...

"... I wish I could describe to you the beauty of my sister's grave - the whole top, one purple mass of sweet violets, and the runic cross lying flat on this lovely bed of violets! The cemetery is the only joyous cemetery I know of - there, the flowers always bloom; the birds always sing ...When I think of our cold snowy cemeteries at home, I wish that all I loved rested just there - where Connie sleeps .. " - Clara Woolson Benedict (1844-1923)

On the edge of the cemetery, you can see why the metro stop is called Piramide.

Pyramid of Cestius

Piramide di Caio Cestio 

Built 18 BC-12 BC

Here is Dawn, with one of the many feline residents of the place!

As you can see, they were doing excavations, next to the pyramid. Excavations are going on continually, in Rome. After all, Rome is a big layer cake of different centuries and millennia of building.

The pyramid, was built as a tomb for Gaius Cestius, a Roman Magistrate and member of the Septemviri Epulonum. (Religious corporation) Apparently, there is a burial chamber inside. It was rediscovered in 1660. You have to get permission to enter, and unless you are a scholar, it's unlikely to happen.

You are always new, 

the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.

~John Keats

Here lies John Keats, in the photos, above and below. He died, in Rome, of tuberculosis in 1821, at the age of 25. Below, he is buried next to his friend, artist, Joseph Severn. The small grave between the two men, is that if Severn's infant son, Henry.

I have been astonished

that men could die martyrs for religion -

I have shuddered at it.

I shudder no more-

I could martyred for my religion-

Love is my religion-

I could die for that.

~John Keats

Three little kitties ...

Below, left, the tomb of Rosa Bathurst, by Richard Westmacott, Jr. (1825)

Angel of Grief

by American Sculptor W.W. Story 

for the grave of his wife, Emelyn

Story, was laid to rest here, with his wife 18 moths later.

This beautiful grave has been copied dozens of times, mostly in American cemeteries, and even put on album covers. The lady, in charge, said that teenagers come to pose with it, and they have to keep them from climbing on it.

The grave of Percy B. Shelley, with the words from Shakespeare ...

Nothing of him that doth fade.

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange

~The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Shelley, died in 1822, drowning while sailing off the Italian Riviera. He was found with a copy of Keats poetry in his pocket. 

Here is a portion of Anonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats written by Shelley

Go thou to Rome -- at once the Paradise,

The Grave, the city, and the wilderness;

And where its wrecks like shatter'd mountains rise,

And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress

The bones of Desolation's nakedness

Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead

They footsteps to a slope of green access

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time

Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;

And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,

Pavilioning the dust of him who plann'd

This refuge for his memory, doth stand

Like flame transform'd to marble; and beneath

A field is spread, on which a newer band

Have pitch'd in Heaven's smile their camp of death,

Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguish'd breath.

... The One remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments. -Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky,

Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak

The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

The graves of the Bulgari family, with red flowers brought in, from the family.

One of the newer graves, Nicole Bulgari, 1939-2011 

Sculpture, below, by Ivar Jonsson. 

It sits atop the grave of Lars Leksell (1907-1986,) who was reunited, in burial, with his wife Ludmila.

The large grave, in the center, in the following photo, is that of Russian painter Karl Pavlovich Brullov (1799-1852.) He was the first Russian painter to become well known in the west.

Below, the grave and family tomb of Thomas Jefferson Page (1808-1899,) American explorer and commander of U.S. Navy expeditions that mapped Argentina and Paraguay. The grave was created by Italian sculptor Ettore Ximenes.

Several years before his death, Shelley wrote of this cemetery ...

It might make one in love with death,

to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

~Percy B. Shelley

After a few busy days in Rome, going around the city, it was nice to be around all the trees and on such a beautiful day! It was the perfect day to visit.

Here is the video, from the cemetery's website. It has lot of history, and great views of not only the cemetery, but the Keats Shelley House on Piazza di Spagna, as well.

Address

Via Caio Cestio, 6

00153 Roma

Hours

Monday-Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm 

Sundays and public holidays 9:00 am - 1:00 pm

In 2006, The Non-Catholic Cemetery, was nominated, by the World Monument Fund, to its list of the world's 100 most endangered sites. Click here, for the link to Friends of the Cemetery, for more information.

Please click on the following links for more information

Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

History of the Cemetery

Pyramid of Cestius

(Entire) Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Shelley

Back in 2009, I went to a screening of the film, Bright Star, and heard its lovely director, Jane Campion, speak. I thought of this film, about Keats, as I wandered through this cemetery. If you haven't seen it, it's very romantic and visually ... so beautiful!

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: 

its loveliness increases; 

it will never pass into nothingness.

~ John Keats