Cor Cordium

"Go thou to Rome--at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shatter'd mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness
Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread..."

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats By Percy Bysse Shelley

Shelley, one of the major English Romantic poets was a vegetarian, a radical and an atheist; a notorious and much denigrated figure during his short life. He drowned on July 8, 1822 at age 29 ,in a sudden storm while sailing his schooner, the Don Juan, off of the Italian coast. His body washed ashore and in keeping with strict quarantine regulations, was cremated on the beach near Viareggio. Shelley's heart was snatched from the funeral pyre by his friend, English writer Edward Trelawny. Shelley's wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, kept it until it was interred with Shelley's ashes in the cramped and decaying Cimitero Acattolico ("Non-Catholic Cemetery", sometimes referred to as the English or Protestant Cemetery). It lies nestled on a hill in the shadows of the Pyramid of Cestius (12 B.C.) and a section of Rome's ancient Aurelian wall. For centuries it was the only place in Rome where non-Catholics could be legally buried; the Vatican assigned it land outside the city walls since non-believers could not be buried on Rome's consecrated ground. It was recently added to the World Monument Fund's 2006 Watch List of the 100 most endangered sites on earth. Many of its important monuments are crumbling like the bones they mark, damaged by pollution and years without archaeological maintenance and by a lack of financial support, owing to it's non-Catholic status. The Italian government has unfortunately never considered it a landmark worthy of funding.

Notable burials
Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872–1940), sculptor
Karl Briullov (1799–1852), Russian painter
Zakhar Grigor'evich Chernyshev (1796–1862), Russian participant in the Decembrist revolt
Gregory Corso (1930–2001), American beat generation poet
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815–1882), American author
Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893–1973), Italian novelist
August von Goethe (1789–1830), son of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937),leader of the Italian Communist Party
John Keats (1795–1821), English poet
Richard Saltonstall Greenough (1819–1904), American sculptor
Alexander Ivanov (1806–1858), Russian painter
Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), Russian poet and philosopher
Hans von Marées (1837–1887), German painter
Malwida von Meysenbug (1816–1903), German author
Axel Munthe (1857–1949), Swedish physician and author
Josef Myslivecek (1737–1781),18th-century Czech composer
Thomas Jefferson Page (1808–1899), commander of United States Navy expeditions exploring the Rio de la Plata
Gottfried Semper (1803–1879), German architect
Joseph Severn (1793–1879), English painter and friend of John Keats, beside whom he is buried
Franklyn Simmons (1839–1913), American sculptor and painter
William Wetmore Story (1819–1895), American sculptor
John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), English poet and critic
Lady Temple (died 1809), wife of Sir Grenville Temple, 9th Baronet
Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881), English author
Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894) American author
Felix Yusupov sr (1856-1928), Russian prince and count, who's son helped murder Rasputin



satellite image: [link]