Camposanto di Staglieno, Genova

This was the big one. It's very difficult for me to put it in words; nonetheless i'll try....

As i mentioned before the cemetery in Milano was huge. But -and that's the really astonishing thing- it is small compared to Staglieno. And again: Nothing prepared me for the sheer size of it. It is absolutely mindboggling!

Here are some facts about it:

The surface covers 330.000 m² (which is more than one million square feet).
There are 117.600 Tombs including 290 chapels and 468 niches inside the vast galleries.
The brochure we got from the office (for free) states that there are more than 2 million people buried there...

We didn't made it in one day there. But even after two days we didn't see all of it.

To get an impression how outstanding this cemetery is i give you two numbers: We shot 287 Photos in Milano (actually it was way more but these are the ones which deserve to be preserved...)

At Staglieno we did 1.076! And that are only the good ones...

This picture shows one half of a gallery (and me moving: A rare thing...); every niche showing a sculpture. And there are 4 of these Galleries. Furthermore there are 2 huge semicircular galleries as well and a vast number of tombs at the irregular area. It has a Protestant, Greek-Orthodox, Islam, Jewish and even an English Area.

It's a  bit sad though that the Staglieno Cemetery is often reduced to the Oneto-Tomb (which is marvellous by the way). There is soo much more to discover as you will see over the next few weeks...