The birth of the monumental cemetery of Messina, also called Gran Cemetery, spring from the need to give burial to the numerous victims of the cholera epidemic that broke out in the middle of the 19th century. Opened in 1872, and remodeled after the earthquake of 1908 (which killed almost 100,000 people), it is a monument in Art Nouveau style, with wide tree-lined avenues, gardens with well-tended flowerbeds and a valuable famedio with Doric-style colonnade.
The cemetery of Messina, considered an artistic masterpiece on a par with the Pere Lachaise in Paris, houses the tombs of Giuseppe and Silvestro La Farina, politicians who gave great prestige to Messina in the late nineteenth century, and, among many others, Giovanni Rappazzo, the man who in the twenties patentedò sound cinema, revolutionizing così the world….
