MEMORY OF THE WORLD REGISTER
Cimitero di Porta a’ Pinti cosidetto Cimitero “degli Inglesi”
(Florence's ‘English’ Cemetery, its archives, and its Mediatheca)
(Italy)
Ref N° 2010-44
PART A – ESSENTIAL INFORMATION
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SUMMARY
Florence’s cosmopolitan Swiss-owned so-called ‘English’ Cemetery, its archives and library
of books by and about the international and ecumenical persons buried between 1827-1877,
nobles, artists, poets, servants, serfs and slaves, British, Swiss, American, Russian,
Scandinavian and others, with inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Cyrillic and fraktura
letters, and in most European languages, including Rumantsch, distils into a small space and
fifty years of time a dense history of Florence, of Europe, of the world. Many of these persons
participated in the Peninsula and Waterloo battles against Napoleon, many were friends of
Florence Nightingale and Henri Dinant, many worked ardently for the Abolition of Slavery
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frances Trollope, Richard Hildreth, Hiram Powers, Theodore
Parker, with the ex-slave Frederick Douglass visiting their tombs), against the employment of
children in mines and factories (EBB, Frances Trollope, Southwood Smith), many for the
rights of women and many for the freeing of nations such as Greece and Italy under foreign
oppression (EBB, Walter Savage Landor, Hiram Powers, Theodosia Trollope, Isa Blagden,
Giampietro Vieusseux, the son of Ferenc Pulszky, the husband of Mary Somerville). The
burial registers and accounts are meticulously hand-written in French by the Swiss owners,
the archive thus being simultaneously chiselled on marble and inscribed on enduring rag
paper. The tombs are sculpted by the leading nineteenth century Italian, English, American
and Russian sculptors. The restoration is being carried out through research in diaries,
guidebooks, engravings and photographs of the period and through work/study by Romanian
Roma who are skilled, but mainly illiterate, craftspeople under the supervision of experts in
an alphabetization programme. The Romanian Roma were themselves slaves from the Middle
Ages until the nineteenth century when Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe being
influenced by Frances Trollope and Richard Hildreth’s anti-slavery novels) was translated
into Romanian. The Cemetery is memorialized in Arnold Böcklin’s Island of the Dead and in
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony on the painting. It is a place dense with meaning.
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DETAILS OF THE NOMINATOR
2.1
Name (person or organisation)
Julia Bolton Holloway, Custodian, President, ‘Aureo Anello’ Associazione
Gerardo Kraft, President, Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Florence
Mario Marziale, Pastore, Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Florence
2.2
Relationship to the documentary heritage nominated
1
Julia Bolton Holloway is the ‘English’ Cemetery’s Custodian, Director of its Mediatheca
‘Fioretta Mazzei, President of the Aureo Anello Association, Professor Emerita, archivist, and
editor for Penguin of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems.
Gerardo Kraft is President of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church in Florence which has
owned the Cemetery since the acquisition of its land from the Grand Duke of Tuscany in
1827. He has been Honorary Swiss Consul and his family have lived in Florence for
generations while maintaining their Swiss citizenship.
Mario Marziale is the Pastore of the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church in Florence, has
published on the church’s history, and is an archivist.
2.3
Contact person (s)
Julia Bolton Holloway
2.4
Contact details (include address, phone, fax, email)
Julia Bolton Holloway
‘English’ Cemetery
P.le Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
(39) 055 582608 (phone and fax)
holloway.julia@tiscali.it
http://www.florin.ms
http://www.ringofgold.eu
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IDENTITY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DOCUMENTARY HERITAGE
3.1
Name and identification details of the items being nominated
Florence’s ‘Cimitero di Porta a’ Pinti cosidetto Cimitero “degli Inglesi”’, the Swiss-owned
so-called ‘English’ Cemetery, its archives, and its Mediatheca.
3.2
Description
This documentation demonstrates the ongoing conservation and digitizing of the materials
and the documentation of that process, in marble, on paper and on the Web. Training under
experts takes place on the premises in restoration work on the tombs and of books and
archival documents. Accessibility to the materials is both in situ and virtual in the form of
physical visits by persons from worldwide to the Cemetery and its Mediatheca and virtual
visits on the Web at http://www.florin.ms , http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com and
http://www.ringofgold.eu. Scholars, photographers and artists using the materials are required
to present a copy of their work for the Cemetery’s archives. Descendants voluntarily present
relevant materials, for instance, photographs of the medals of the Crimea that are sculpted on
a tomb and which still in the possession of the family. We share our materials with other
organizations such as the Waterloo Committee for use in their publications. Members of the
Aureo Anello Associazione present books to the library relevant to the Cemetery, etc., in
particular books by and about the persons buried here.
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An important facet of the collection is the many translations and editions of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese.
Hungarian, Czech), that we now possess. We give in this packet a numbered copy of our own
hand-bound bi-lingual limited edition in English and Italian of EBB’s Sonnets and Ballads
which include her anti-slavery poems and which raises funds for the restoration of tombs.
Research has also been carried out on Lord Leighton’s sketches for his design of her tomb,
sketchbooks which are to be found at Leighton House Museum, the Royal Academy Library
and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and which include his design of the Exodus
harp with the broken slave shackle. We exhibit the ‘Florence in Sepia’ photographs, the rare
books and first editions by persons buried here, and the pieces of Roman, medieval and
Renaissance pottery we find in our soil. These are shown in a room with limited lighting for
their preservation.
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JUSTIFICATION FOR INCLUSION/ ASSESSMENT AGAINST CRITERIA
4.1
Is authenticity established?
Careful contemporary and later documentation exists on the premises for each of the 1,400
burials and for the remaining 700 tombs. In Tuscany in this period the churches rather than
the State were responsible for the registration of births, marriages and deaths. Duplicate
records are held in the Guildhall Library, London, for the Anglican burials in the Cemetery
and in St Petersburg for the Russian Orthodox burials. We have collated our entries with these
with the help of scholars. The entire schedatura of the monuments is being compiled for the
Belle Arti. By their very nature this material, whether in stone or on paper, is about
authenticating burials.
4.2
Is world significance, uniqueness and irreplaceability established?
In a small area of land, now an island in the midst of Florentine traffic, monuments were
erected and documented concerning the memory of many international and ecumenical
figures who shaped history in their own time, their ideals continuing into the future.
Thousands visit the Cemetery, including the American ex-slave Frederick Douglass, Arnold
Böcklin painted it in Island of the Dead, Sergei Rachmaninoff composed music it, Franco
Zeffirelli filmed it in Tea With Mussolini, many scholars and artists work within its oval
beneath its tall cypresses. It was abandoned for a century, its fine garden put to weed killer,
the tombs vandalized, but both the tombs and the garden are now being restored in a ten year
project. The archives are being carefully studied in relation to the monuments. A library was
established collecting books by and about the persons buried here. Six thousand persons, on
the web and as physical visitors to the Cemetery, have signed its petition that it remain open,
that it be restored and that it be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
4.3
Is one or more of the criteria of (a) time (b) place (c) people (d) subject and theme (e)
form and style (f) social, spiritual and community significance satisfied?
(a) The ‘English’ Cemetery represents the memorializing in marble and paper of a half
century (1827-1877), as if frozen in time. It documents an important era in Italy’s history, the
Risorgimento, in English history, the Regency and Victorian periods, in European history, the
Napoleonic era, and in world history, the Colonial presence
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(b) The ‘English’ Cemetery is, in a sense, the world and its meanings gathered up into one
small, dense place, an ‘Island of the Dead’ in Florence, a Cemetery which originally lay just
outside the wall and gate known as the Porta a’ Pinti, first built by Arnolfo di Cambio with his
sculpted stemma of the lily and the cross, using the stones from the Ghibelline ‘towers of
pride’ for the Guelf walls of common defence, then rebuilt by Michelangelo Buonarotti to
fortify the city against the Medici. It is thought that this artificial hill was erected as an
Etruscan tomb and it is situated on the road leading toward Etruscan Fiesole, the gate being
originally called the Porta Fiesolana. The hill was further built up with rubbish dumped over
the medieval wall, resulting in many shards of hand-painted maiolica ware being collected
from its soil. These have been identified and catalogued by Marino Marini of the Uffizi
Gallery as Roman, medieval, Renaissance and modern, at the urging of Timothy Wilson of
the Ashmolean Museum, and which include several pieces with the crutch, the emblem of the
Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, founded by Dante’s Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari. We
have the complete documentation between Giuseppe Poggi and the Swiss owners at the
Risorgimento concerning the Cemetery’s restructuring, with the destruction of the
medieval/Renaissance wall and the changing of its shape to an oval surrounded by Parisianlike boulevards.
(c) Influential foreigners flocked to Florence because it was cultured and cheap and because
they thought that their illnesses, such as tuberculosis, could find a cure there. Prior to 1827
non-Catholics could not be buried in Florence if they died here, the cadavres needing to be
transported to Livorno without benefit of refrigeration. For the next half century the illustrious
and also almost unknown dead could find burial under its tall cypresses, the Swiss burying
pauper travellers for free as an act of charity. In a sense it is a sister cemetery to Rome’s
Protestant Cemetery whose tombs for the poets Keats and Shelley are matched by those for
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor and Arthur Hugh Clough. Mary
Somerville buried her husband, William, here, she herself being buried in Naples in a tomb
sculpted by Francesco Jerace. A self-taught mathematician, she was responsible for the
discovery of Neptune and Pluto and taught Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter
mathematics, Ada then, with Charles Babbage, inventing the computer, for she suggested to
him using Jacquard loom cards with holes punched in them and the Binomial Theorem.
Frances Trollope and Richard Hildreth wrote the first and second anti-slavery novels, to be
copied by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Southwood Smith, Frances Trollope and EBB wrote against
the employment of children in mines and factories. Not only the burials but also the
Cemetery’s sculptors are of world interest, Lorenzo Bartolini, Odoardo Fantacchiotti, Holman
Hunt, Frederic Lord Leighton, Hiram Powers, Francesco Jerace, Michele Auteri Pomar,
Emilio Zocchi, Johan Bystrom, Fyodor Kamensky, and others. It reflects a moment of great
creative energy, before the skills from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in
literature and art were lost. Our burials are associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, with the
Oxford Movement, with the Abolition of Slavery, with the Risorgimento, with the
development of hospitals. Excellence in literature and art, especially poetry and sculpture, and
in medicine and in mathematics, by both women and men, are celebrated here. It is
memorialized in Arnold Böcklin’s Island of the Dead and in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s
Symphony on the painting and, later, by Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea with Mussolini. Children,
women and men are equally present.
(d) Funerary and burial records and the resulting tombs, deepened further by the library’s
gathering of books and documentation by and about the persons buried here, demonstrate the
themes of hope (the black slave brought at 14 from Nubia in 1827 is baptized with the name
Nadezhda (‘Hope’) in a Russian Orthodox family, her story being told on her marble tomb in
Cyrillic; the sculpture by Odoardo Fantachiotti of ‘Hope’; the American child Hope Hayward,
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buried in a tomb with the inscription, ‘Our Hope’), and freedom, with the many participants in
the Risorgimento and other seekers after liberation, from the Turks in Greece, from the
Russians in Poland, from the Austrians in Hungary, from the French of Napoleon by the
English, Irish, Scots and Welsh, etc.
(e) The earlier period of the Cemetery is dominated by copies of Neo-Classical monuments,
including cinerary and lacrimal urns on columns, or broken columns garlanded by flowers, or
great sarcophagi, when, at this period, only burial in the earth was actually carried out. These
monuments, which give the Cemetery a romantic and very beautiful aspect, were mainly
created by Pietro Bazzanti whose firm still exists in Florence at the Palazzo Corsini on the
Arno. He was also much influenced by Expedition to Egypt and Nubia carried out the year the
Cemetery started by Champollion and Rosellini and which was funded by the Grand Duke of
Tuscany. The Cemetery’s resulting Egyptian forms of obelisks and pyramids and motifs
sculpted on the tombs have been studied, documented and catalogued by Florence’s Museo
Archeologico (enclosed). The later monuments, by world-famous sculptors (see
http://www.florin.ms/sculptors.html), are in a more naturalistic Victorian style. In both
periods the less showy tombs could be of incised slabs or stele of marble. Only half our tombs
survive. Some we cannot identify.
(f) Until 1827 only Catholics and observant Jews could be buried in Florence. The Grand
Duke, of the Enlightenment, sold the land to the Swiss for the Cemetery in the face of
considerable opposition from the Church. It was opened for burial to Protestants, Anglicans,
Orthodox, non-observant Jews, and others. Later, the Grand Duke became more conservative,
calling in the Austrian army to regain his power, and during this period Italians who became
Protestant were imprisoned, one of our burials being of Rosa Madiai, this period being
documented by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Casa Guidi Windows and by Walter Savage
Landor in his last Imaginary Conversation, which is about Rosa Madiai who is also buried
here. As well as representing a move to greater freedom of religion the Cemetery is the final
resting place of many who worked the Abolition of Slavery, for better conditions for children
working in mines and factories, for the rights of nations and for the rights of women. The socalled ‘English’ Cemetery today is much loved by Florentines as a place commemorating
those who came from abroad appreciating their city and opening it to the world. It is also
world famous as the burial place of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as portrayed in the Swiss
Arnold Böcklin’s painting, the ‘Island of the Dead’, and in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music on
the same. Despite some disapproval, the Custodian is a Catholic hermit who lives on the
premises preventing vandalism in exchange for space for an ecumenical, polyglot library
(which contains a section on trauma and nomadic and indigenous populations subject to
discrimination and poverty), and who works as non-salaried volunteer for the Protestant Swiss
church’s President and Pastore. This troika have agreed that the Romanian Roma work/study
project is of value as a means for inserting these new European Citizens into their full Civil
Rights to work, housing, education and medicine. The Cemetery and its library and archive is
a continuing monument for the freedom of religion, for the Risorgimento of Italy, for the
rights of women and children, and for the Abolition of Slavery and its Civil Rights
movement, then and now.
4.4
Are there issues of rarity, integrity, threat and management that relate to this
nomination?
There were earlier attempts by the Swiss to give the Cemetery to the Comune, then to FAI, as
it was seen as a ‘white elephant’ liability, not an asset. It could easily have become a parking
lot as has happened beneath the island in the same boulevard, the Viale Gramsci, where the
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Florentine State Archives are now situated. It had been neglected badly for a long period but
the Custodian as President of the Aureo Anello Associazione, a Friends of the Library group
that next became also a Friends of the Cemetery group, has worked closely with the Pastor
and the President of the Swiss Church to raise funds, to effect the Cemetery’s restoration and
to document its archives, in tandem with SDIAF and the Soprintendenza Archivistica per la
Toscana and with the Belle Arti. We document our work in the newest archival medium, on
the Web, at http://www.florin.ms, a website that Google Analytics gives as receiving 13,000
page views from 110 countries/territories a month.
The work of conservation is urgent as many of the inscriptions on the monuments have
become unreadable due to traffic pollution. The Opificio delle Pietra Dura and CNR ‘Nello
Carrara’ carry out research on the degradation of the marble and pietra serena. Professor I.
Trizzino and his students of the Facoltà di Scienze Matematiche Fisiche e Naturali, Corso di
Laurea in Tecnologia per la Conservazione e il Restauro dei Beni Culturali, have written an
85 page ilustrated handbook on the ‘English’ Cemetery. It will be possible with the Romanian
Roma workers to clean the tombs under expert supervision (using alkali and elbow grease,
never acid) and to seal the marble with crystalline wax every two years to protect them from
the traffic pollution. Employing the Romanian Roma workers will lift them out of dire
poverty and mendicancy and enable them to become literate. This section of the project is
called ‘From Graves to Cradles’. The Roma are subjected, as were former slave blacks in
America, to profoundly disturbing racial prejudice in both their own country and in Italy. We
desire to showcase their restoration skills so that they may win respect. To this end we are
working with the EU Commission’s Social Fund, the Regione Toscana and the Open Society
Institute of the George Soros Foundation in Budapest. We have formed with our workers a
sister association, Asociaţia ‘Agrustic Somnacuni’ for them to preserve their families and to
preserve their Romanes language. This stage of the project shall be fully documented on the
web at the website http://www.ringofgold.eu.
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LEGAL INFORMATION
5.1.
Owner of the documentary heritage (name and contact details)
Gerardo Kraft, President, Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera
Cimitero Porta a’ Pinti
P.le Donatello, 38
50132 Firenze, Italy
5.2
Custodian of the documentary heritage (name and contact details, if different to
owner)
Julia Bolton Holloway in consultation with Pastore Mario Marziale
Cimitero Porta a’ Pinti
P.le Donatello, 38
50132 Firenze, Italy
5.3
Legal status:
(a) Category of ownership
Private
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(b) Accessibility
We are open to the public Monday mornings, 9:00 a.m - 12:00 m, Tuesdays through Fridays,
in winter, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m., in summer, 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. There are stairs at the gate
with a railing for the infirm that we have had installed. The hill has a gradual incline.
(c) Copyright status
We require all photographers and researchers to receive permission and to give a copy of their
work for the archives.
(d) Responsible administration
Julia Bolton Holloway
(e) Other factors
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MANAGEMENT PLAN
6.1
YES
Is there a management plan in existence for this documentary heritage? YES/NO
Research: For ten years we have carried out intense research on the so-called ‘English’
Cemetery and have doubled the size of its Mediatheca’Fioretta Mazzei’.
A book has already been published on the History of the Swiss Church and its Cemetery by
Pastore Mario Marziale.
A further book is being written by Julia Bolton Holloway, Custodian, to be titled Thunders of
White Silence; Florence’s ‘English’ Cemetery, telling the stories of the tombs sector by sector
in chapter after chapter, followed by a chapter documenting the history of the Romanian
Roma and their work in restoring the Cemetery, and which will include a DVD giving the
complete schedatura for each tomb as compiled for the Belle Arti and its accompanying
archival documentation.
Conservation: Our Archives are stored on the premises in an upstairs armadio, safe from
flooding, and can be consulted and photographed with our consent in our library on the main
floor.
Our Cemetery is a laboratory for restoration work and used by CNR “Nello Carrara”, the
Opificio delle Pietre Dure, and the Istituto per l’Arte ed il Restauro. In consultation with the
Belle Arti, CNR and Opificio delle Pietre Dure we contract with experts and with workers to
carry out consolidation and conservation projects.
We teach book-binding and restoration and paper marbling, using nineteenth century
equipment and methods.
Cultural Activities: We hold international conferences with scholars on the Cemetery in the
series we established on ‘The City and the Book’, publishing their Proceedings on the Web.
As well, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Florence has held an exhibition on our
Egyptian motives, inspired by the 1828 Expedition of Champollion and Rosellini, and the
Gabinetto Vieusseux has held a conference and exhibition on ‘Hiram Powers a Firenze:
Convegno e mostra documentarian el bicentenario della nascita (1805-2005)’.
We have been televised several times on Italian television, on Swiss television (on our
Rumantsch graves) and on British television.
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We encourage poetry readings and artists sketching in the Cemetery. Theatre groups and film
directors use our setting for performances and films.
Many university programmes schedule guided tours of the Cemetery for their students.
We strongly encourage educational and cultural activities.
Publicity: We aggressively maintain websites, a weblog and a Facebook page. We document
our research and conservation simultaneously on the Web at http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspèot.com and http://www.ringofgold.eu
Funding: We actively seek funding for the restoration and maintenance of the Cemetery from
private individuals, from descendants, from associations and foundations, and from city,
provincial, regional, European and United Nations governmental entities. Our Nomination to
the Memory of the World is a part of this fund-raising project.
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CONSULTATION
7.1
Provide details of consultation about this nomination with (a) the owner of the heritage
(b) the custodian (c) your national or regional Memory of the World committee
(a & b) From 1827 the Cemetery has been administered by the Pastor and the President of the
Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church in Florence working together with its Custodian. Today
this Committee meets together each Tuesday morning in the library, the Mediatheca ‘Fioretta
Mazzei’ within the Cemetery, and it is this Committee that submits this Nomination, working
together in synergy.
(c) We sought diligently to place this nomination with the Italian National Committee for
UNESCO but have failed in making any meaningful contact with that body. Perhaps it is
difficult for an Italian, Rome-based and non-English speaking body to comprehend us. We
are, however, valued by the Ministero per I Beni e le Attività Culturale, the Regione Toscana,
the Provincia di Firenze and the Comune di Firenze, and by their entitities safeguarding
archives. We are a member of ASCE, Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe. We
network with the Casa Guidi, EBB’s home and now a museum in Florence, with Eton College
which houses a fine collection of Browning material, with the Armstrong Browning Library
of Baylor University in Texas, which has the largest collection of Browning material, with the
Leighton House Museum in London, with the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, and with the
international members of our Aureo Anello Associazione who are descendants, scholars and
other interested persons. Our work with the Roma from Romania in Florence involves us with
the European Commission, with Romanian Government’s National Agency for Roma and
with the Open Society Institute in Budapest.
PART B – SUBSIDIARY INFORMATION
8
ASSESSMENT OF RISK
8.1
Detail the nature and scope of threats to this documentary heritage (see 5.5)
Decay, neglect, pollution, lack of proper drainage to the hill, and vandalism of the monuments
has been a matter of concern to Florentines for several generations. The previous neglect of
both the documentation and of the monuments resulted in their depreciation, the Cemetery
and its archive being considered a ‘White Elephant’, particularly when the Swiss Evangelical
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Reformed Church was forced by the Comune of Florence to pay millions to restore the rusted,
broken iron railing, a railing originally put in place and owned by the Comune. Following the
burial of the famous Ballerino and Choreographer Evgen Polyakov the Comune of Florence
granted the Swiss Church permission to create 500 new loculi for the burial of ashes. While
this activity will fund the maintenance of the Cemetery it is also a threat to its integrity,
marring the beauty of the old monuments with glaring modern machine-made products. (We
limit the size and height of the new graves.) Another threat is the projected building of the
‘tramvia’, which is essentially an urban train, that is planned to pass along both sides of the
Cemetery’s oval.
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ASSESSMENT OF PRESERVATION
9.1
Detail the preservation context of the documentary heritage (see 3.3)
I. The Archives are in excellent condition, apart from some 1966 Flood damage, due to the
rag paper on which they are written, but they are in need of duplication lest they be lost in a
fire or a further flood and their data lost. They are carefully kept in an upstairs armadio for
safety. The Soprintendenza Archivistica per la Toscana is willing to consult on this task. The
burial entries are of great interest as they document the Canton, the profession, the parents’
names, and even the mother’s maiden name, of the deceased, while the accounts give full
details of the coffin, its wood, whether lined with white silk or not, the horse and carriage
hire, the plumes, the gloves and crepe for the hats, and of the grave, whether walled or not,
etc. (Within half a block is another abandoned cemetery, that of the all-male Misericordia,
which even has the funerary carriages and hearses of long ago mouldering away under its
arches. It could be splendid to preserve both Cemeteries as a kind of Florentine Père
Lachaise.) We liaise with SDIAF (Sistema Documentario Integrato dell'Area Fiorentina), and
the Soprintendenza Archivistica per la Toscana, for which see their letters enclosed with this
Nomination.
II. The ‘English’ Cemetery tombs have been badly damaged, partly by a British bomb
(friendly fire?) in WWII, by the subsidence of the hill (especially in the 1966 Flood), by
vandals and by pollution. They have also been damaged by traffic pollution and acid rain and
many of the inscriptions are disappearing. They are catalogued carefully with descriptions,
measurements and digital photographs, their inscriptions likewise carefully recorded as an
archive in marble, and are studied as a laboratory in conservation methods by CNR “Nello
Carrara” and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. The monuments are now being restored according
to the availability of funds from descendants and corporate bodies. Along with the restoration
of the tombs, work is being carried out to restore the nineteenth-century English garden using
as documentation diaries, guidebook descriptions, engravings and photographs of the period.
For years it had been put to weedkiller, now forbidden, and which had used chemicals that
had also eroded the pietra serena bases to the tombs. Visitors donate daffodil, narcissus,
hyacinth, lilies and iris bulbs, box, myrtle, lavender, papyri and rose bushes. The Florentine
lily is our wild purple iris and these in the Spring are a dream. The cypresses, famed in Arnold
Böcklin’s ‘Island of the Dead’ are under the care of an expert. We no longer allow plants with
invasive roots, such as laurel or cherry, finding these destroy tombs. The Roma are excellent
workers, as blacksmiths for the iron, as stonemasons for the tombs and the dry walls, and as
gardeners, preferring to use manual labour rather than ‘quick fix’ chemicals and machinery.
We are under the tutela of the Belle Arti (Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici ed il
Paesaggio e per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico e Demoetnoantropologico per le provincie di
Firenze, Pistoia e Prato) of MiBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali) of the Italian
Government, and are compiling for them the complete schedatura of the Cemetery’s
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monuments. We liaise with the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. We participate in the EVA
conferences in Florence.
III & IV. ‘Florence in Sepia’, ‘Florence’s 1966 Flood’ and other photograph collections. The
collections of nineteenth and twentieth century photographs of Florence are conserved,
digitized and exhibited. We are in contact with the descendants of Hiram Powers who own a
complete archive of the photographs of his son, Longworth Powers, of Florence, and in
particular, of the English Cemetery. It is planned that these, too, will be digitized for guidance
in restoration work in the Cemetery. Similarly, an album of photographs, now in Scotland in
the possession of Lord Crawford, descendant of Lord Lindsay, gives photographs of two
tombs by Félicie de Fauveau. A further exhibition of photographs, ‘Now Let Us Praise the
Roma’ is by Karen Graffeo of the Roma families in Florence, Bologna and Romania. Karen’s
family in Alabama featured in James Agee and Walker Evans’ Depression Era Now Let Us
Praise Famous Men. These join the Roma cradle and are exhibited in the library. The library,
as well, collects fine volumes on photography, including one by Jonathan David and Richard
Holloway, Together Let Us Sweetly Sing. All photographers working in the Cemetery are
required to give a copy for our archives.
V. The Mediatheca ‘Fioretta Mazzei’ collects books and offprints, publishes books and CDs,
binds and restores books, marbles paper, and conducts classes in book-binding, book
restoration and paper marbling. We particularly collect books by and about our persons buried
here. Recordings are made of readings from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage
Landor, Dante Alighieri and others. Its next project shall be to record the poetry of Arthur
Hugh Clough. We originally used an IPod with an X-treme Mic but these became obsolete so
we have recently purchased the USB Yeti microphone for this task. With the purchase of a
videocamera we hope to film aspects of the restoration work which can then be published on
the Florin and RingofGold websites. We liaise with many other associations, the Waterloo
Committee (letter enclosed), the Leighton House Museum, the Armstrong Browning Library
of Baylor University, the Walter Savage Landor Society of Warwick, the Brontë Society,
Saltaire (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), and ASCE (Association of Significant Cemeteries
in Europe).
VI. The Florin website, http://www.florin.ms, is constantly maintained and updated with
essays, recordings, ‘City and Book’ Proceedings, and research concerning the Cemetery and
concerning Florence. It receives, according to Google Analytics, over 13,000 page views a
month
from
110
countries.
It
has
an
accompanying
blog,
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com and a presence on Facebook. These are means for
making contact with descendants and scholars, sharing information, organizing international
conferences, raising awareness concerning the Roma and for raising funds for the Cemetery’s
restoration and maintenance
VII. The international conferences in Florence and, in future, other cities on ‘The City and the
Book’ are initiated by a Call for Papers published on scholarly Discussion Lists on the Web
and their Proceedings are published on the Florin website during and immediately following
the conferences. Concurrently with them we hold Book Fairs and courses in calligraphy,
manuscript illumination, book-binding and book restoration.
VIII. We have worked with Roma families from Romania in Florence for nine years, shaping
the ‘From Graves to Cradles’ project with them. This accords with the anti-slavery theme of
our Cemetery and also with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s heroine Marian Erle in Aurora
Leigh, who teaches herself to read and write and who is Roma. These Romanian Roma
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families in Florence have carried out dry wall rebuilding, conservation of the wrought and
cast iron of the tombs, tomb restoration and cleaning of the marble, and gardening, in
exchange for literacy and computer skills. In 2008 the Bishop of Fiesole gave €5000 to the
project to employ the Romanian Roma Daniel Dumitrescu to conserve the Cemetery’s rusted
but splendid nineteenth-century wrought and cast iron work and this was carried out
excellently at the same time that Daniel built two wooden rocking cradles, one for our library,
the Mediatheca ‘Fioretta Mazzei’, the other for his new-born daughter, Gabriela. In 2010,
Daniel, 25, now President of Asociaţia Agrustic Somnacuni, returned from Romania to
restore the pietra serena bases of many of the tombs and to clean two marble tombs, one for
the ancestor of the Viscount Gough, the other partly sculpted by Francesco Jerace, who also
sculpted the Mary Somerville figure for her tomb in Naples. The RingofGold website serves
for literacy and skills training, health care and educating against racism. Daniel and his wife
have created and illustrated booklets in four languages that are also online. Their Asociaţia
‘Agrustic Somnacuni’ has as mission the preservation of Roma families and the Romanes
language. The Roma in Romania were not only slaves from the Middle Ages until the
nineteenth century, they were also victims of the Holocaust and received no reparations. We
liaise with the European Commission, the National Agency for Roma of the Romanian
Government, the Open Society Institute of George Soros, the Regione Toscana, the Opera di
San Procolo, the Fondazione Giovanni Michelucci, the Fondazione Don Lorenzo Milani, the
Valdensian Church in Florence, concerning this project.
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