Cimitero Monumentale di Staglieno

This monumental cemetery in the district of Staglieno, Genoa, Italy, is considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Europe, «an open-air museum», famous for its weeping angels, mournful widows and its eerily lifelike depictions of the deceased and their bereaved. The lifelike depictions have earned the nickname «the talking statues».

As per the movement in Europe at the start of the 19th century to move burials out of the city churches into the suburbs, plans for the cemetery were made in 1835 on the heels of the cholera epidemic in Genoa. Preliminarily designed by the prominent Genoese architect Carlo Barabino, who sadly died in the same year due to cholera, the project was realised by his pupil Giovanni Battista Resasco. The plans were approved in 1840, Resasco having stayed with the original neoclassical design of his master. The cemetery was opened to the public in 1851, but due to the size of the project it was only completed in 1880.