may-november 2017
UK – ITALY – Greece (AGM ASCE 2017 Athens)
EUROPEAN CEMETERY HERITAGE: RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE CEMETERY SPACES AS THE CULTURAL SPACES – Foundation Banca del Monte di Lombardia
The Melancholy Heritage is a field cultural research project in the cemeteries between UK and Italy. The aim of the project is to identify the good practices of cultural enhancement of the cemetery spaces by the cemetery management and the community through participation to activities in cemeteries, collection of materials, feedback, interviews, meeting with the local stakeholders.
Case history to report in Italy (specifically in Lombardy) as the good practices to be inspired by for the future of cemetery spaces also from a cultural point of view.
Thanks to the financing of the Foundation Banca del Monte di Lombardia bank and the support of many organizations such as: London (The Royal Parks, Friends of Brompton Cemetery, The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, The Friends of Nunhead Cemetery…), Bristol (Arnos Vale Cemetery), Bologna (Comune di Bologna, Istituzione Musei Bologna – Museo del Risorgimento, ASCE-Association of Significant Cemeteries of Europe, Associazione Amici della Certosa), Genoa (Comune di Genova, Museo del Risorgimento – Istituto Mazziniano, Arci Genova), Turin (AFC Torino S.p.A).
Two different European contexts with several cultures and religions was useful to understand the relationship between the city of the living and the city of the dead today.
The comparison of two cultural contexts, so different from each other, also is part of a method of investigation on other issues related to cemeteries including the funeral practices, the trauma of mourning in the different communities, the cult of individual and collective remembrance.
For us the research ‘on the road of cemeteries’ continues…