Campo Verano

Campo Verano covers more than 80 hectares and is Rome's largest cemetery, lying in the eastern Tiburtino district next to the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. It was laid out from 1812 under Napoleonic rule following the Edict of Saint-Cloud, which required burials to take place outside inhabited city centres for sanitary reasons. After 1855 architects led by Virginio Vespignani turned it into a monumental complex with a quadriporticus, neoclassical mausoleums and park-like quarters. In 1943 Allied bombing struck the basilica and parts of the cemetery. Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Marcello Mastroianni now rest here. Protected as an Italian national monument, the site impresses with its mix of sculpture garden, family chapels and the adjoining Romanesque basilica.