Cimitero delle Porte Sante

Climbing each step to the top of Piazzale Michelangelo the first level reached is of the cemetery.  The tombs near the entrance of the gate face difference directions, vary significantly in their age, and represent different styles of burial.  There are large, family mausoleums, individual sarcophagi, and traditional tombs stones.  Different levels of wealth and individual legacies are represented as the cemetery winds around the base of the church.  It is deceptive to walk through the waist high gate at the entrance of the cemetery and then to see the great scale of space that this cemetery occupies.  The grounds are vast and filled.  Then as the circle seems to close a stairway leads underground to another community mausoleum filled with individual burial compartments.  It is hard to comprehend the density of this space.  The location holds a stunning perspective of the city of Florence and is almost an oasis from the business of the city.  This cemetery and church hold their place at the top of a hill and can maintain their spiritual value without being interrupted by the tourism and life of the city.  Visiting the English Cemetery it was harder to disconnect the city from the place of the dead because of the noise of the cars traveling around the base.  At the top of the hill there was a difference feeling.  There was a calmness and a peace that I hadn’t felt during my previous visit.  Uninterrupted by the growing industry this burial ground holds the potential for longer preservation.  Thinking about the cemeteries that we are walking on as we are in the Piazza del Duomo, they had to be covered sometime.  Though that looks centuries back in time the notion that they were once at the surface can’t be forgotten.  It was the slow progression and expansion of the city that drove them underground.  Is that what is happening to the English Cemetery?