Monumental Cemetery of Milan
Open-air museum cemetery of eclectic marble tombs, Liberty-style sculpture, and a grand neo-medieval entrance hall.
Location
About this audio guide
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.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Rotonda della Besana
Petal-shaped baroque arcade around a former church, sitting over a hospital cemetery's catacombs.
Santuario di San Bernardino alle Ossa
Small Baroque chapel whose walls are entirely lined with roughly three thousand human skulls and bones.
Basilica di Sant'Eustorgio
Dominican basilica with a marble martyr's tomb and fragments of the Three Kings' relics.
Basilica di San Lorenzo, Milano
Ancient basilica behind Roman columns, hiding a mosaic chapel first built as an imperial tomb.
Arches of Ancient Porta Nuova
Twin medieval brick arches set with reused ancient Roman funerary busts and a marble tabernacle relief.
Chiesa di San Marco
Gothic and Baroque nave where Verdi conducted his Requiem premiere in eighteen seventy-four.