Cimitero degli Inglesi (Florence)
The Cimitero degli Inglesi (Cemetery of the English) is a cemetery in Florence . It was created in the 19th century for non-Catholics, especially Protestants . English graves predominate, as they, including many writers and visual artists, formed the largest group among foreigners in Florence at that time.
history
In 1827, the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church acquired a piece of land from the Grand Ducal Administration under Leopold II in front of the Porta a Pinti city gate, which no longer exists today , outside the medieval Florentine city wall on the road to Fiesole , to create a cemetery for Protestants and Orthodox Christians to put on. Previously, if they died in Florence, they could only be buried in Livorno, a hundred kilometers away .
The cemetery was designed by the young architecture student Carlo Reishammer . It lies on a flat hill, now covered with trees, mainly cypresses, and is divided into four quadrants by two paths at right angles to each other. At the crossroads there is a pillar with a stone cross, which Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia had erected in 1858.
The current oval shape was given to the cemetery by Giuseppe Poggi when the medieval city walls in Florence, the capital of Italy from 1865, were torn down and the ring roads ( Viali di Circonvallazione ) were built instead . Since then, the cemetery has been located on a traffic island in Piazzale Donatello. In 1877 the cemetery was closed to new burials. Since then, non-Catholic groups have been using the Cimitero Evangelico agli Allori near Galluzzo .
Today the cemetery is occasionally used again for funerals. At the entrance there is a small library with materials related to the history of the cemetery and the people buried in the cemetery.
Famous pepole
There are 1,409 graves in the cemetery, including writers, artists, merchants and others from 16 nations. Well-known personalities buried in the cemetery are:
- Theodore Parker (1810-1860), American theologian and writer
- George Augustus Wallis (1761–1847), British landscape painter
- Menu, George (1780–1855), Geneva-born translator.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), English poet, the tomb was designed by Frederic Leighton .
- Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861), English writer
- Thomas Southwood Smith (1788–1861), English medic and social reformer
- Frances Trollope (1779–1863), English writer
- Giovan Pietro Vieusseux (1779–1863), Italian writer and publisher, founder of the Gabinetto Vieusseux
- Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864), English writer
- Hiram Powers (1805–1873), American sculptor
- Joel Tanner Hart (1810–1877), American sculptor (exhumed)
literature
Il Cimitero protestante detto “degli Inglesi” in Firenze , brochure on the cemetery, text by Pastore Luigi Santini, Amministrazione del Cimitero degli Allori (1981)
Web links
- Catalog of the graves in the cemetery ( Memento from March 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
- Information on www.cultura.toscana.it ( Memento of April 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (Italian)
Coordinates: 43 ° 46 ′ 39.1 ″ N , 11 ° 16 ′ 5.4 ″ E