Rome is building up to the canonisation of not
one but two Popes - the Polish Pope, John
Paul ll, and John XXlll. But there is, though,
one corner of Rome that always lies just a little
beyond the world of Catholicism.
In the winter of 1821, in the heart of Rome, in a
house by the Spanish Steps, a young
Englishman lay dying.
He was the poet, John Keats. He had
tuberculosis, and with death approaching he
asked a friend to go and inspect the Protestant
Cemetery, where he would be buried.
His companion was able to report back that it
would be a fine place for the poet's bones to lie,
and all these years on, it remains a rather
beautiful setting.
As soon as you step through its gates, the
clamour of the city traffic starts to fade. And as
you walk further in, the air fills with sound of
birds, and the scent of flowers. The sun slants
through the tall trees and falls on the ranks of
headstones.
They rise up a slope towards a wall that's
nearly 2,000 years old - a wall that was once
part of the defences of ancient Rome.
This place is now known as the Non-Catholic
Cemetery . And when I visited early on a fine,
spring morning it seemed to be sunk in a deep
peace.
I took the path that leads to a far corner, and to
Keats's grave.
On the grass around it there was a bright
carpet of white daisies. But the words on the
gravestone captured the gloom and sense of
failure that engulfed the poet in his last days.
He was only 25, and the world was yet to
recognise his genius. He felt he'd made no
mark.
The epitaph he asked for on his headstone
reads: "Here lies one whose name was writ in
water."
Keats's friend and fellow poet, Shelley, called
the cemetery the most beautiful he'd ever seen.
And soon he'd lie there too.
Just a year after Keats's death, Shelley
drowned off the coast of Italy. And his ashes
are buried just beneath the Roman wall.
Above the tomb a ruined watchtower rises
towards the blue of the sky. Perhaps up on the
broken ramparts the ghosts of legionnaires still
stand guard.
And in the earth all around Keats and Shelley, in
the thousands of graves lie other poets, and
painters, and writers and sculptors.
Along with them are diplomats, soldiers,
tourists, and many others.
For centuries, Rome with all its history, its past
glories and ancient faith has drawn all kinds of
people from every corner of the world. Of
course, not all of them were Catholic. And at
one time, if they died here, that could be a little
awkward.
They couldn't be buried in consecrated Catholic
ground. But nearly 300 years ago Pope
Clement Xl decreed the establishment of the
Protestant cemetery - lying just within the
sacred city's walls.
Some of the first to be buried there were
English visitors struck down in Rome while on
the "grand tour" of the sights of Europe.
Others in the cemetery had come hoping
Rome's Mediterranean climate might be good
for their health - but then been fatally
disappointed. Malaria and cholera sometimes
lay in wait on the banks of the Tiber.
And some met death in Rome in violent ways.
Among those in the graveyard is an early victim
of the city's traffic - a traveller who died as he
tried to fling himself clear of an overturning,
horse-drawn carriage.
There were victims of hunting accidents. And
an assassinated Iranian dissident also lies
buried beneath the cypress trees.
Some in the cemetery will have felt very far
from home as they drew their last breath. But
many will have chosen to die here.
They'll have loved Rome, adopted it as theirs
and lived long and happy lives in this place.
Now all these people lie together. Americans
and Swedes, Russians and Irish, Serbs and
Japanese - Protestants, Orthodox Christians,
Jews, Muslims and atheists. A great
international community of the dead.
Pope John XXIII - featured on a church door in
his home town - is due to be canonised later
this month
And in this mix of peoples and traditions, you
see a range of ways that they've tried to mark
and make sense of death.
Some do it very simply, with just a few lines on
a headstone.
One captures the feelings of a mourning relative
with the words: "I shall remember while the
light lasts. And in the darkness I shall not
forget."
But some have tried to express their emotions
in much more elaborate ways.
Standing on one headstone is a sculpture of an
almost-naked angel - as tall as a man and
with stone wings rising high above his head.
He looks as if he's just landed, and he stares
across the graveyard, watching the butterflies
flicker through the shadows and between the
tombs.
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