Parish Cemetery - S. Maria del Carmine Cemetery

Thus begins the Spoon River Anthology, the famous collection of poems that Edgar Lee Masters published between 1914 and 1915 in Reedy's Mirror of St. Louis.

Each of them, written in the form of an epitaph and inspired by characters who really existed in the Springfield area of Illinois, tells the life of the people buried in the cemetery of a small village: Spoon River.

In Rome, near the “Parrocchietta”, the church made famous by Alberto Sordi with his first radio personality and the 1951 film “Mamma mia, what an impression!”, there is something very similar.

Under the great viaduct of the Portuense, in fact, an old cemetery recounts the life and death of men and women of the nineteenth century.

As in the pages of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River, on these tombstones it is possible to read the history of the people buried there, to still discover today what they were, their work and their loved ones.

The cemetery was built following the cholera epidemic of 1855 and, once the health emergency had passed, it was opened to the burials of the dead of the Magliana community, simple people but also witnesses of great historical events such as the Great War.

In 1931 the cemetery was purchased by the Municipality of Rome and since 1992, after the elevation of Via Portuense and the construction of Viale Isacco Newton, it has become a suburb of the suburbs: hidden from view and visited more and more rarely.

Most of the tombstones are not in very good condition, but the cemetery is clean and there are fresh flowers near the more recent burials.

Walking in the paths we can read what we no longer see in today's cemeteries: the story of life. In fact, we are used to reading dates and little else, maybe a few verses, but here we read in a few words what these men and women of the 19th century were.

And so we find the master of the Parrocchietta who "with affectionate care, for three decades enlightened the virgin minds, educating them to love God, family and country"; the Roman soldier "struck by Austrian lead on the peaks of Trentino"; the husband and affectionate father, lover of work and family; the industrious and honest man who died of an accident at work; the loving mother and exemplary woman; and again the "Christian woman, a delight of hers, an example of virtue to those who knew her"; or the father who failed to see his son "fighter against the hated enemy".

Where are Francesco, Domenico, Cesare, Adelaide and Teresa, the teacher, the soldier, the exemplary wife, the farmer, the loving mother?

Everyone, everyone, sleeps under the overpass, a stone's throw from a McDonald's.

Map: Parish Cemetery - S. Maria del Carmine Cemetery