Protestant Cemetery, Rome
The Cimitero Acattolico of Rome, often referred to as the Cimitero dei protestanti or Cimitero degli Inglesi, is a private cemetery in the rione of Testaccio in Rome. It is near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, a small-scale Egyptian-style pyramid built between 18 and 12 BC as a tomb and later incorporated into the section of the Aurelian Walls that borders the cemetery. It has Mediterranean cypress, pomegranate and other trees, and a grassy meadow. It is the final resting place of non-Catholics including but not exclusive to Protestants or British people. The earliest known burial is that of a University of Oxford student named Langton in 1738. The English poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley are buried there.
Burials
John Keats
Keats died in Rome of tuberculosis at the age of 25, and is buried in the cemetery. His epitaph, which does not mention him by name, is by his friends Joseph Severn and Charles Armitage Brown, and reads:Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley drowned in 1822 in a sailing accident off the Italian Riviera. When his body washed up upon the shore, a copy of Keats' poetry borrowed from Leigh Hunt was discovered in his pocket - doubled back - as though it had been put away in a hurry. He was cremated on the beach near Viareggio by his friends, the poet Lord Byron and the English adventurer Edward John Trelawny. His ashes were sent to the British consulate in Rome, who had them interred in the Protestant Cemetery some months later.Shelley's heart supposedly survived cremation and was snatched out of the flames by Trelawny, who subsequently gave it to Shelley's widow, Mary. When Mary Shelley died, the heart was found in her desk wrapped in the manuscript of "Adonais," the elegy Shelley had written the year before upon the death of Keats, in which the poet urges the traveller, "Go thou to Rome...".
Shelley and Mary's three-year-old son William was also buried in the Protestant Cemetery.
Shelley's heart was finally buried, encased in silver, in 1889, with the son who survived him, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, but his gravestone in the Protestant Cemetery is inscribed: Cor cordium, followed by a quotation from Shakespeare's The Tempest:
Other burials
- Arthur Aitken, British military commander
- Walther Amelung, German classical archaeologist
- Hendrik Christian Andersen, sculptor, friend of Henry James
- R. M. Ballantyne, Scottish novelist
- John Bell, Scottish surgeon and anatomist
- Dario Bellezza, Italian poet, author and playwright
- Karl Julius Beloch, German classical and economic historian
- Martin Boyd, Australian novelist and autobiographer
- Pietro Boyesen, Danish photographer
- Karl Briullov, Russian painter
- Giorgio Bulgari, Italian businessman, grandson of Sotirios Bulgari, the founder of Bulgari
- Andrea Camilleri, Italian novelist
- Asmus Jacob Carstens, Danish-German painter
- Jesse Benedict Carter, American Classical scholar
- Enrico Coleman, artist and orchid-lover
- Gregory Corso, American beat generation poet
- Richard Henry Dana, Jr., American author of Two Years Before the Mast
- Luce d'Eramo, Italian writer
- Frances Minto Elliot, English writer
- Robert K. Evans, United States Army Brigadier General
- Robert Finch, English antiquary and connoisseur of the arts
- Arnoldo Foà, Italian actor
- Karl Philipp Fohr, German painter
- Maria Pia Fusco, Italian screenwriter and journalist
- Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian novelist
- John Gibson, Welsh sculptor, student of Canova
- August von Goethe, son of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; his monument features a medallion by Bertel Thorvaldsen
- Antonio Gramsci, Italian philosopher, leader of the Italian Communist Party
- Richard Saltonstall Greenough, American sculptor
- Augustus William Hare, English author
- William Stanley Haseltine, American painter and draftsman
- William H. Herriman, American art collector
- Ursula Hirschmann, German anti-fascist activist and an advocate of European federalism
- Wilhelm von Humboldt, son of the German diplomat and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt
- Vyacheslav Ivanov, Russian poet, philosopher, and classical scholar
- Chauncey Ives, American sculptor
- Gualtiero Jacopetti, Italian director of documentary films
- Dobroslav Jevđević, Serbian World War II commander
- John Keats, English poet
- Lindsay Kemp, British dancer, actor, teacher, mime artist, and choreographer
- August Kestner, German diplomat and art collector
- Adolf Klügmann, German classical archaeologist and numismatist
- Antonio Labriola, Italian Marxist theoretician
- Belinda Lee, British actress
- James MacDonald, Scottish baronet and scholar; his tombstone was designed by G.B. Piranesi
- Hans von Marées, German painter
- George Perkins Marsh, American Minister to Italy 1861–1882, author of Man and Nature
- Richard Mason, British author of The World of Suzy Wong
- Malwida von Meysenbug, German author
- Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro, British classical scholar
- Ernest Nash, German-American scholar, archaeological photographer
- E. Herbert Norman, Canadian diplomat and historian
- Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge, Australian sculptor, and her partner, Hélène de Kuegelgen
- D'Arcy Osborne, 12th Duke of Leeds, British diplomat and last Duke of Leeds
- Thomas Jefferson Page, commander of United States Navy expeditions exploring the Río de la Plata
- Milena Pavlović-Barili, Serbian Italian artist
- John Piccoli, son of American artists Juanita and Girolamo Piccoli of Anticoli Corrado
- Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian nuclear physicist
- G. Frederick Reinhardt, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, 1961–1968; administrator of this cemetery, 1961–1968
- Heinrich Reinhold, German painter, draughtsman, engraver; his tombstone features a medallion by Bertel Thorvaldsen
- Sarah Parker Remond, African American abolitionist and physician
- Amelia Rosselli, Italian poet
- Gottfried Semper, German architect
- Joseph Severn, English painter, consul in Rome, and friend of John Keats, beside whom he is buried
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet
- Franklin Simmons, American sculptor and painter
- William Wetmore Story, American sculptor, buried beside his wife, Emelyn Story, under his own Angel of Grief
- Niklāvs Strunke, Latvian painter
- Pavel Svedomsky, Russian painter
- John Addington Symonds, English poet and critic
- Manfredo Tafuri, Italian architectural historian
- Tatiana Tolstaya, Russian painter and memoirist and daughter of Leo Tolstoy and Sophia Tolstaya
- Edward John Trelawny, English author, friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, beside whose ashes he is buried
- Elihu Vedder, American painter, sculptor, graphic artist
- Shefqet Vërlaci, Prime Minister of Albania
- Wilhelm Friedrich Waiblinger, German poet and biographer of Friedrich Hölderlin
- J. Rodolfo Wilcock, Argentine writer, poet, critic and translator
- Friedrich Adolf Freiherr von Willisen, Prussian General and Ambassador to the Holy See
- Constance Fenimore Woolson, American novelist and short story writer, friend of Henry James
- Helen Zelezny-Scholz, Czech-born sculptor and architectural sculptor