Historic Monumental Cemetery of San Giovanni in Persiceto

At the end of the eighteenth century, a ground owned by the suppressed Confraternity of Santa Maria della Scoppa was chosen as the place where to create a new cemetery out of town. The necessary works were immediately undertaken to build an early enclosing wall, which seems to have already been completed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The core of the Monumental Cemetery is the first enclosure where, according to the records stored in the municipal historical archive, "deposits" were granted to both citizens and clergy, in equal measure, since 1817. The monumental tombs of Canon Giuseppe Sassoli, Dionigio Masetti and the Lodini, Zecchi, Maccaferri and Sacchetti families stand out.

The Chapel  that was built by the municipal engineer Luigi Gamberini in the mid-nineteenth century stands in the centre of this first enclosure. It shows a neoclassical outline, with a large tympanum and columns crowned with Ionic capitals. The emblem of the peach tree, which represents the coat of arms of San Giovanni in Persiceto, is displayed over the portal. A new wider entrance to the cemetery was also build in the same period for easier access to hearses and was provided with an iron gate. A second enclosure was added to this first porticoed courtyard in 1855, on account of increasing death numbers due to the cholera epidemic. Only starting from the early twentieth century, the cemetery expanded southward with new arcades, filling even the internal spaces in the courtyards with elegant cells and family tombs.

The first two courtyards include some of the most precious monumental tombs and some historical persons are hosted here, who are well known both locally and nationally, such as historian of religions Raffaele Pettazzoni, an, trade unionist Giuseppe Fanin, who was killed in an ambush in 1944, for whom a beatification process was opened, and doctor Giuseppe Gherardo Forni, former Rector of the University of Bologna from 1956 to 1962. His old-style sarcophagus is placed on a stone pavement that simulates an ancient Roman road.

A special tale is attached to the tomb of the musician Enrico Barbi : his daughter Alice, a celebrated singer, musician and composer, who performed in many theatres and courts across Europe, commissioned it. Alice's daughter, Alexandra, then married Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of “The Leopard”.

 In the first courtyard some marble busts of men and women peep out from the arches under the long portico, notably those of the merchant Nicola Masina, created in 1896 by the famous Bolognese artist Pasquale Rizzoli, of hospital administrator Mauro Forni and of Vilelma Chierici who, after emigrating to Argentina, had wished to be buried in her homeland.

On the right-hand side of this portico other excellent tombs appear: Serafino Sacenti with the marble portraits of his entire family, sculptured by Venturi at the end of the nineteenth century, a famous local company of skilled marble artisans who have left countless testimonies of their craftsmanship in the Certosa Cemetery in Bologna and in many churches and buildings well beyond San Giovanni in Persiceto; Francesco Savorini, producer of liqueurs that were renowned and exported all over the world.

The beginning of the twentieth century brought about a great change in taste from Realism to the Liberty style. The tombs are decorated with highly valuable marble and wrought iron decorations. Flowers, angels, funerary symbols and mosaics can be admired along the walk, which are evidence of greater wealth compared to the earlier enclosures, thus confirming both the artistic and social changes that the affluent middle class then embodied.

Collective monuments were designed to emphasize the participation of the citizens of San Giovanni in Persiceto to many national war campaigns. In simplicity and without decorations, they stand out as a symbol of war dead remembrance: The Veterans of Homeland Battles, The Fallen of the Great War and The Partisans’ Memorial, introduced by Dante’s quotation "Freedom he seeks, which is so dear”.