Qualla: Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria

Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria: Introduction

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Giova81, CC BY-SA 3.0. An angel presses a finger to his lips. Sculpted by Giuseppe Sartorio for the Birocchi-Berol mausoleum, this marble figure guards a ceiling painted with clouds and plaster angels, its single gesture -- silence -- the only instruction the dead require. The Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria is filled with such moments: sculpture and sentiment woven into stone across a hillside that people have been burying their dead on for millennia. Before the modern cemetery opened on January 1, 1829, this ground held Punic tombs, Roman graves, and early Christian burials carved into the limestone. The living built their city of the dead on top of another one.

Image: Giova81 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria: A Hill of the Dead, Old and New

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Giova81, CC BY-SA 3.0. Captain of Engineers Luigi Damiano designed the modern cemetery in 1828 at the base of Bonaria hill, and it grew upward over the following century through multiple extensions -- the work of architects including Gaetano Cima, who designed the expansion thirty years after the origi...

Image: Giova81 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria: The Sculptor's Gallery

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Giova81, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walking through Bonaria is like walking through an open-air sculpture museum where artistic tastes shift with every row. Giuseppe Sartorio dominates -- his works span decades and styles, from the massive marble Ezekiel in the Chapelle family mausoleum to the tenderly realistic st...

Image: Giova81 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria: An Archaeologist Buries Himself

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Giova81, CC BY-SA 3.0. Perhaps the most characteristic tomb belongs to Giovanni Spano, the canon and archaeologist who wrote his own Latin epitaph while still alive and designed his final resting place using archaeological remains he himself had excavated from Bonaria hill. The result is a Roman-style ...

Image: Giova81 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria: Decay and Memory

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gioele Serra, CC0. The cemetery closed to new burials in 1968 -- only private chapels and vaults purchased before that date still accept the dead. New burials go to San Michele Cemetery, opened in 1940. Without the constant attention that active use demands, Bonaria has fallen into decay. The Campo...

Image: Gioele Serra | CC0