Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy Part V: Two beauties...

..... they both leave me speechless because i'm lacking the appropriate words. Again it was a good thing that it was raining because the wet texture on the sculptures is quite unusual. I've seen a lot of pictures from italian cemeteries but they don't have that. So it's good to see that i've made something special here. 

Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy Part IV: The evil ones.....

Jep. There's not just grief and beauty. There is also fear, death and terror!

Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy Part III

Since the weather here is truly dreadful (it's not that dreadful - but it is fraggin' cold!) i thought i'll show some more from Milano. It was about 15 degrees warmer so in retrospective the rain wasn't that bad...

Thanks to the vast main Building you can visit this Cemetery on any weather conditions and still see plenty of angels and other gems of beauty.

Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy Part II

Less text, more Photos this time.

The second one is made by me, but it reminds me, oddly enough, of a cover of a book i own for a long time....

Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy - First Part of many i guess...

Dear Readers,

yesterday we came back from our short trip to Italy. My wife and me spent a few days there - mainly to tackle the famous cemeteries there.

We arrived last Sunday and unfortunatly it was raining. But that couldn't stop us to drive directly into Milano and visit the Cimitero Monumentale. I've seen a lot of pictures of it before my visit there and i thought i knew at least roughly what to expect.

But no Google Earth, Flickr or even printed books about that cemetery could prepare me for this. I often read descriptions of it like "It's a beautiful place" or "Plenty of Angels: It's worth a visit!" But nobody told me how big it is:

It is shockingly huge!

It was crammed and packed with beautiful, interesting and stunning sculptures and soon i was lost and speechless. As i said nothing could prepare me for the sheer size of it. I was standing there and i was covered in goosebumps.

Just some facts about our trip before we come to the first batch of photos: We had 2 DSLR's (a Canon 450d and a Canon 100d - which was borrowed by a very close friend of mine) and we had 4 lenses  (we used only 2 of them: a 50mm 1.8 II and a 70-200 4.0 L). We shot 679 pictures at Milano. It was quite a rush job, because we didn't had the time we wanted and we missed more than we saw. And while the rain was quite annoying it gave us at least some brilliant pictures because some sculptures are fairly dramatic if wet...

See for yourself:

Thankfully there were huge halls where we were safe and where we could see some angels in the dry:

The last post this week... i guess

The reason: On Sunday i'm off to Italy. And i'm soo excited about it because i'll get the chance to see two of the most important cemeteries on earth: Staglieno in Genoa and Monumentale in Milano....

Prazeres Cemetery, Lisbon

Prazeres Cemetery, Lisbon

Skulls and crossed Bones

As an old symbol for mortality and evanescence the skull is often found on Cemeteries:

This one here is particulary scary:

The first three i've found in Lisboa, the last one is in Brugge.

Angels in Concrete

Concrete is often used for angels at cemeteries. It's a good example that concrete isn't made for eternity....

Both pictures were taken in Budapest, Kerepesi Cemetery.

Hannover Engesohde III: Just some beauties....

Two posts a day is somethig new but after my ranting about the Protestants  i felt the need to post something undisputable beautyful.

 

Some thoughts about cemetery culture in Europe

I've noticed something that's nagging on me for a while: It's the different approach of the christian churches graves concerning...

I know it sounds a bit ambitious for a small blog like this but still here's what i think:

The different christian churches (in my limited experience mainly the catholic church and the Churches who follow the Protestant Reformation) are doing things quite differently. And the Catholics are doing it (at least in my opinion) better: The graves of their dead are more often a thing of beauty and of passion.

Protestant Reformation Cemeteries are very often dull, cold and uninviting. Their Headstones are often very simple and very unpersonal. And if they contain something personal and even artistic it is quite often very strange. To get the picture here i will show you two examples:

This is a -believe it or not- a statue on a Protestant grave showing Jesus. And it seems to me that they made him deliberatly ugly. I just don't see the point.













Here's a Jesus that looks proper to me and it's on the same cemetery:

To make my point here's another example: This is the Protestant idea of an Angel:

Don't get me wrong again: I like every grave that is even remotely interesting and this piece of art is interesting indeed. But it is incredible ugly either. Again: Why?













Here's an example of a proper angel:

This one was again on the same cemetery.








To get to an end today and to an end to this large post i'd like to show you some details of the freaky Jesus:

All pictures were take at the Johannisfriedhof, Bielefeld, Germany.

Autumn in Germany: Bielefeld Johannisfriedhof (Johannis Cemetery)

Yesterday was such a gorgeous day: Plenty of sun but not unbearable hot. We took the opportunity to visit the Johannis Cemetery (sorry: just a german entry in the Wikipedia) and i was truly amazed to see such a splendid cemetery here in Ostwestfalen-Lippe.

See for yourself:

Hannover Engesohde II: Pieces of Modern Art

Headstones found at Hannover Engesohde Cemetery.

Hannover Engesohde

The bigger the city the better the cemetery. At least that's the case in Germany in my experience.

Male Models on Cemeteries

Mourning is not only a female thing on Cemeteries. Here are some male examples:

An excuse for yesterday: Today there's just beauty.

Yesterday i've posted something that didn't fit my intention for this blog. It was not about beauty. But today it is.

Looks like she's enjoying the early spring sun...

Sunset this morning

This morning gave us a spectacular sunset. The colour of the sky was just breathtaking and so i took my camera and set off to work this morning. I stopped at a small cemetery on my way and took this picture.

The cemetery itself is breathtaking, too. But in a more negative way: It is one of the most dreadful ones i've ever seen (and i've seen a lot - if you believe...). It is situated near a busy highway and that's the most positive thing to say about it. Which is nothing, come to think of it. There are no beautiful trees around to speak of, the headstones are dull and dreadful. There's a sad distance and interchangebility between the headstones, nothing personal to speak of apart from the names and the dates carved on them. They are erected in lines and rows and paths obviously planned by a bloke with a passion for rulers and 90-degree-angles. No surprises for the visitor here. Even Stevie Wonder couldn't get lost here.
 In short: It's like the most cemeteries here in northern Germany (at least on a small-town-level) but even worse. I really pity the people buried here.