Rome’s Biggest Cemetery: A Tranquil and Engrossing Wander Through History

Rome’s largest cemetery, the Cimitero Comunale Monumentale Campo Verano, is the most extensive in Rome with 2,253 memorials, as well as countless smaller graves. There have been burials on the site for at least 20 centuries—remains have been found of the Roman catacombs of Santa Ciriaca—but the present layout was begun in 1804 following a Napoleonic edict that forbade burials in churches or within town walls.  The cemetery was designed by the urban planner Giuseppe Valadier with