The site, also widely known as the Protestant Cemetery although it contains the graves of Jews and other non-Christians, is one of the oldest burial grounds in continuous use in Europe.
It is hard to think of another urban site quite so glorious. Its towering cypress trees and abundant flowers and greenery shelter a heterogeneity of elaborate and eclectic graves and monuments, nestled on a slope in the shadows of the Pyramid of Cestius (dated between 18 and 12 B.C.) and adjacent to a section of Rome's ancient Aurelian wall.
"It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place," wrote Shelley, not long before he drowned and was buried here.
It has recently been added to the World Monument Fund's 2006 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites on earth. Many of its important monuments are deteriorating, damaged by pollution and suffering from the consequences of years without effective conservation and maintenance.
Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, the little Cemetery was something of a pilgrimage site, revered by authors. Daisy Miller, the heroine of Henry James's eponymous novella, was buried there. After an audience with Pope Pius IX in 1877, Oscar Wilde visited the Cemetery, proclaiming it "the holiest place in Rome."
The Cemetery can be visited daily and the Visitors Centre is a source of information and itineraries (see Visit Us for details).
Rome's Non-Catholic Cemetery possibly contains the highest density of famous and important graves anywhere in the world, the final resting place of the poets Shelley and Keats, of many painters, sculptors and authors, dozens of diplomats, Goethe's only son, and Antonio Gramsci, a founding father of European Communism, to name a few.