San Michele cimitery

The cemetery of San Michele

The Cemetery of San Michele is considered one of the greatest monuments of Venice. A magical and enchanted place, in the silence of the northern lagoon of Venice. To get there you have to take a vaporetto line 4.1 or 4.2 (direction of Murano ) from Fondamente Nove: get off at the first stop and landed directly on the island that is home to the Campo Santo .

Venice is also in this particular: the Campo Santo is located here since 1807 as a result of the Napoleonic laws (before the burials were made in the churches, in the churchyards or in the ossuary of Sant’Ariano) and has this conformation since 1837, when the canal was filled in that distinguished the two islands of St. Michael and St. Christopher.

The island actually has its origins in the tenth century, was also home to the important library of the Camaldolese in the beginning of 1200. Here Napoleon had set up in prisons where they were imprisoned, among others, the Carbonari Silvio Pellico and Maroncelli .

The Cemetery is now not only a goal of the Venetians but also because of the tourists: is considered a true monument with its white church Coduss , its high walls made of bricks and its rows of cypress trees .

Also, here the remains of great personalities lie. Among all, we recall the Russian writer Joseph Brodsky (1940 – 1996 , buried in the Gospel) , the footballer and coach Helenio Herrera (1916 – 1997) , the American poet Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972, buried in the Gospel ) , the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971 buried in greek part) , the painter Emilio Vedova (1919 – 2006), the composer Luigi Nono (1924 – 1990 , psychiatrist Mark Levy MD (1924 – 1980) and the Venetian writer Giustina Renier Michiel (1775 -1832 ) , the first Italian translator of the works of Shakespeare.

But the Cemetery of San Michele is also a place that can tell many stories of life and death. The advice is to lose yourself in the most ancient tombs and read the words engraved and was impressed day after day, move you when you cross the area where the children are buried , whose tombstones are decorated with toys, plush dolls and drawings, and be lulled by the silence of long avenues.

A curiosity: it seems that the cemetery also brings with it a mystery that covers the hole number 6, which is the tomb of Sister Victoria Gisella Gregoris: she come from the convent of San Francesco della Vigna. After taking the vows at age 21 under the name of Serafina, it seems that religious before his death, in 1935 , she confessed to her sisters that her body at the time of exhumation, would not have been found in the tomb where they buried her. And so it was. When her body was exhumed in 1947, there was not found the skeleton of a nun but only his clothes and a rosary.

The Cemetery is open from Monday to Sunday from 8am to 4.30pm (winter time ) and from 8am to 6pm (summer time ). A recommendation: remember that you are in a Campo Santo , and the keepers recommend suitable clothing, not to camp out and do not eat inside.