Cimitero monumentale di Staglieno -again-

Dear readers -or rather viewers: I'm a bit lazy with words...

I'm not growing tired about the Staglieno Cemetery, Genoa. And i've not showed you all the photos i've made there. Not by a mile.

So i'd like to show you some more, this time focused on female scuptures:

Cimitero Monumentale Torino -again-

Just a small amount of text this time since i'm focusing on the images.  I think this suits you as well..

The images this time are a bit on the black/white side but that's just an illusion. The sky on the day i took these ones was a grey sheet from horizon to horizon. And that makes everything a bit bleak and shallow. It was perfect weather for portraits since the shadows were very soft, but it was rubbish for my purposes. I hope you enjoy these ones anyway...

Arcades leading to ....

....this.

Angel under a pale grey sky

Slightly different angle.

Proof: Not Black/White images all the way!

Cimitero Monumentale Torino

This post requires an explanation because it is the hardest post i've ever done.

Last October we visited the Cimitero Monumentale Torino. On a friday. And it began to go horribly wrong...

We began to unpack our equipment but were soon stopped by a policeman who pointed at a sign (which we didn't see before). The sign clearly depicted a crossed out camera... What now? That was a situation we've never faced in Italia before. The policeman lead us to the office and the staff, however nice and friendly they were couldn't really help us.

It turned out that photography is only allowed on mondays as a part of an official guided tour. That was very unfortunate because we wouldn't be in Torino anymore on the next monday... And since it was a guided tour you don't get the time you need to take proper pictures.

So we begged and smiled a lot and lo! We were given a form to fill out and then we were handed some tags that showed that we are allowed to take pictures. The downside however was that we could only make pictures for private purpose only. No commercial use and no publishing whatsoever. And that isn't very helpful for this blog.

So the following weeks i had several conversations via email and other communication-channels and finally (with the big help of Mauro Felicori, the Head of the Economy and Promotion Department of Bologna Municipality and a personal friend of the director of the Cemetery : Mille grazie, Amico!) i got the permission to show the pictures i've made there.

Enjoy:

Riensberg Cemetery, Bremen

The Riensberg Cemetery was not the sole purpose of our visit to Bremen. Mainly it was the Ludovico Einaudi concert. But since we were there we took the opportunity to visit this beautiful cemetery. It has quite a lot of marvellous monuments, but the landscape is even more stunning. This park-like cemetery has lots of old trees (which i love on cemeteries) and there's even a beautiful lake inside the cemetery. And since Bremen is near the North Sea it even has it's own flock of seagulls.

We once again were lucky regarding the weather so we had fantastic light at the hour before sunset.

Rock'n'Roll Angel

It's all greek to me...

What a stunning piece of art! Just look at the level of detail..

Crazy colours. 

Mosaic above the crematorium. 

The crematorium. 

Ostenfriedhof Dortmund

 Sometimes i get asked how i manage to find the Cemeteries that are shown in this blog. Some of these Cemeteries are so famous that further research about them is redundant (Like Highgate in London: It's clear that it is a good one. Or Pere la Chaise in Paris: Another obvious one.).

Every single Cemetery in Italy is worth a visit as long the belonging city is bigger than 30.000 people. That's a fact. The cemetery in Verona (population 264.000) is far more spectacular than the Cemetery in Hamburg (population 1.800.000) which has the biggest Parklike Cemetery in the world. But a big park does not make a great cemetery. It's (at least that's what i'm after) the statues and the sculptures. The Angels. The beauty. It's not the amount of Rhododendron.

But why the Ostenfriedhof Dortmund? Well, we were invited to attend a party in Dortmund anyway so i took the opportunity to visit a cemetery there as well.

First step is always Wikipedia. You'll get a decent list of cemeteries as long as the city you're planning to visit is big enough. Dortmund is fairly big (popolation ca. 580.000) so i was lucky this time and found the entry for the Ostenfriedhof Dortmund.  And since you always get coordinates for an entry like this you can check out the location on Google Earth. There you can find often pictures of the cemetery and get a feeling about the place. This time i was fairly confident that the Ostenfriedhof was worth a visit and i was quite right!

Sometimes the research about the visited Cemetery is not ended after the visit. This time i digged deeper than ususal and i learned a very interesting fact about this beautiful cemetery: Many sculptures there were made by Benno Elkan, a jewish artist born in Dortmund.

Sorry 'bout the massive amount of text this time, but i deemed it worthy...

The weather was a bit nasty, but raindrops are always rewarding...

Iron-wrought papaver. 

Wandelnde, 1904, Benno Elkan

Persephone, 1908, Benno Elkan

Persephone, 1908, Benno Elkan