Monumental Cemetery of Milan

This guide to the Monumental Cemetery of Milan centers on a small chapel built for the conductor Arturo Toscanini, after his five-year-old son Giorgio died in Italy in 1906 while Toscanini was touring the United States. You'll hear how Toscanini turned to his friend, the sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi, known for a career carving funerary monuments, and how Bistolfi and architect Mario Labo built the chapel between 1909 and 1911. The guide traces the ship carved above the doorway and its double meaning, and names who else came to rest here, including Toscanini's wife, his daughter Wanda, her husband Vladimir Horowitz, and for a time Giacomo Puccini. Look inside for the empty cradle carved into the wall.