The cemetery of Staglieno is one of the most beautiful monumental cemeteries in the world. In terms of fame it is second only to that of Père Lachaise in Paris. Friedrich Nietzsche, Guy de Maupassant, Mark Twain and Evelyn Waugh are just some of the many historical figures, writers, travellers, artists and philosophers who have left evidence of their visits to Staglieno and their wanderings along the great monumental galleries. All of them, though in different ways, remember the great impression and the charm of this place of public and private memories, where the monumental will joins, inseparably, the "romantic" suggestion of the landscape, in a very close interweaving between monument, architecture, historical memories and nature.
Here rests Mary Constance Wilde (Oscar Wilde’s wife), Giuseppe Mazzini and Fabrizio De Andrè.
The Cemetery of Staglieno was officially opened to the public on 1st January 1851. Although at this date it was still largely unfinished, its specific architectural, functional and symbolic features had already been outlined.
The project had already been entrusted in 1835 to the civic architect Carlo Barabino (1768-1835) – to whom we owe most of the neoclassical features of Genoa and the realisation of representative buildings such as the Carlo Felice Theatre, the Palazzo dell’Accademia and many others – who, however, was unable to complete the task due to his sudden death in 1835 during the great cholera epidemic. The task of developing the project was then entrusted to his pupil and collaborator Giovanni Battista Resasco (1798-1871), whose plan was approved in 1840. The works began in 1844 in the area of Villa Vaccarezza in Staglieno, mostly still sparsely inhabited and not very far from the city centre.
