The monumental cemeteries

We are in the village of the same name at the foot of the hill, not far from the road that climbs towards Superga. It is one of the small district cemeteries still in use, very different from the large Monumentale. Along the avenues the forms of the graves change and you can sense the link with the landscape of the village. The visit is short, but it is worth doing it without hurry, respecting the peace of the place.

From that first core, through successive enlargements, a very extensive complex developed. In the porticoes, the private chapels and the funerary monuments, classicism, eclectic forms and Art Nouveau coexist. Sculpture and architecture change their language from one avenue to the next, following the taste of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If you are looking for a specific work, we recommend the map, also available through the operator's information services.

Turin sculptors and architects worked here between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. MuseoTorino points out, among other works, the tomb of the Durio family, made by Leonardo Bistolfi in 1901, and the Monumento Pratis by Pietro Canonica, from 1920. Traditional compositions alternate with allegorical figures and with monuments that follow the taste of their own time. To find the individual works, the maps of the four sectors published by MuseoTorino are useful.

Today there are six sections. In 1867 the Jewish Community of Turin was assigned an area of the new city cemetery, after centuries in which its burial grounds had been moved several times. Among the tombs is also that of the writer Primo Levi. The visit runs through the history of the Community, including the persecutions suffered in the twentieth century. Bear in mind that the sections are not accessible on Saturdays or during Jewish holidays.

Here you will also find the Monumento ai Caduti per la Libertà, built in 1952 to a design by the architect Carlo Mollino, with the collaboration of the sculptor Umberto Mastroianni. Compared with the chapels and monuments of individual families, here twentieth-century funerary architecture changes register. It is a place that speaks of the Resistance and of the Liberation of Turin through the names and the memory of those buried here.

Tamagno was a famous Turin tenor, a leading figure on the international opera scene in the second half of the nineteenth century. The mausoleum was built in 1912 to a design by the architect Raineri Arcaini, with contributions by the sculptors Grossoni, Bolgiani and Mauro. The contrast between the classical forms of the architecture and the sculpted figures gives the monument its character. It is one of the most recognisable examples of Turin's funerary monumentality of the early twentieth century, born from the work of an architect and sculptors.

Every year, commemorations are held here to remember the players and all the other people who lost their lives in the accident. It is a memory that in Turin goes well beyond football. In the cemetery there is also another memorial, separate from the plaques and located in the Ottava ampliamento (eighth extension). If you wish to see both places, the map will help you find them.

Designed and built by the engineer Pompeo Marini, the Tempio was inaugurated in 1888. It is linked to the Società per la Cremazione di Torino, founded in 1883 with Ariodante Fabretti as its first president. Its history tells of a change at the end of the nineteenth century, when new conceptions of the funeral rite confronted the relationship between science, religion and society. A change that here still has a concrete function.