Together with Père Lachaise in Paris and Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Staglieno is one of the most important monumental cemeteries in the world.
This cemetery has quite rightly been classed as a museum of bourgeois art from the 19th and 20th centuries.
In this truly fascinating place, death has nothing grim to it, but becomes an excuse to celebrate art and life, especially a life ‘well lived’, as defined by the moral, religious, ethical and aesthetic principles of the Genoese entrepreneurial Bourgeoisie of 100-150 years ago.
Public and private memories of the deceased and of their families melt into a deeply romantic natural and artistic landscape, where architecture, nature and history become inextricably intertwined.
All types of art forms from the 19th century to the present day are herein represented: Neoclassicism, Realism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Art Déco. The top-most names in Italian sculpture, such as Santo Varni, Giulio Monteverde, Lorenzo Orengo and Leonardo Bistolfi just to mention a few, have graced this cemetery with fascinating statues, at different times and using different artistic styles.
Several prominent Genoese, such as Giuseppe Mazzini, actor Gilberto Govi, singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André, are buried at Staglieno, together with some who, though not so famous in life, have nevertheless acquired fame by resting here. A case in point is late 19th-century doughnut and nut street-seller Caterina Campodonico, who spent her hard-earned pennies on a life-size statue of herself for her grave.