The present cemetery has ancient origins, dating back to a tragic event. The town needed a proper cemetery. When the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, next to which the old cemetery lay, was destroyed and abandoned by the Confraternity of Suffrage, the town was left without a place for its dead, and bodies were left on the slope below, near today’s Belvedere.
To avoid the foul smells and resulting diseases to which the townspeople were exposed, Prince Poniatowski offered to build a cemetery outside the walls, but it was actually built thanks to Cardinal Antonio Tosti, then pro-treasurer of the Apostolic Chamber. The treasurer began the works in 1842. Two years later, in 1844, as Capponi recounts, there was such a famine that the people of San Felice were forced to eat “poppies, chicory and other local wild plants”, cooked in seawater. Many diseases appeared and mortality rose so sharply that it became urgent to deal with such a high number of deaths. The cemetery was completed on 9 December 1855 by Bishop Monsignor Bedini.
Over the years the cemetery has been altered and extended, as the clearly contemporary structures show. Walking through it, you can retrace the life of this area, home to famous scholars such as Alberto Carlo Blanc, noble families such as the Aguet, and many others. Celebrities from literature and entertainment also chose to remain in the place they loved, such as Anna Magnani, Alberto Lupo, Marcello Fondato and George Weller.
