San Michele is in the lagoon close to Venice and has been the city's cemetery ~ Cimitero ~ since the early nineteenth century. As Venice is an island community, it's not really surprising that its cemetery is also an island of it's very own.
Venetian graves abound with floral tributes and make one of the most colourful cemeteries to be seen. Families make special pilgrimages to these graveyards, heading there en masse on the 1st and 2nd November to lay flowers. In Italy the chrysanthemum is the flower for the dead, thereby making them an unsuitable gift for the living. On these days there are special additional ferry services to the cemetery.
There are two churches on the island, the large San Michele and the smaller San Cristoforo. San Michele was designed by Mauro Codussi in the 1460s and was one of the earliest Renaissance churches in Venice, with a white facade of Istrian marble overlooking the lagoon.
The cemetery is divided up into many sections with the usual divide of Catholic and Protestant interments. One such area is given over to the humble memorials of nuns and the sometimes less humble graves of priests.
There is also a section for gondoliers and the makers of the boats themselves. It is tradition, that the widows of Gondoliers who die, inherit their husbands Gondolier licence.
Against the far wall you will find the tombs of Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the Ballet Russe and Igor Stravinsky the composer of 'The Firebird', whose resting places are festooned with the offerings from ballet and music lovers.
Diaghilev and Stravinsky 1921
Other graves of exiles in Venice include Russian Princesses and Counts and the expatriate American poet Ezra Pound whose plot resembles a flowerbed.
Space is limited on the island, although an enlargement is under way, and burials are squeezed in tightly. Nowadays dead Venetians are only guaranteed a few years of rest on San Michele. After a period of around ten years, remains are exhumed and stored in an ossuary. Discreet noticeboards around the entrance list the timetable for exhumations.
San Michele is off the northern shore of Venice, and can be distinguished by its high walls and cypresses. The island is on the route of the regular vaporetto services 41 and 42 to Murano, the stop is called Cimitero.
I've begun this blog with one of my all time favourites from Highgate Cemetry in London. The lion named Nero sleeps peacefully, eternally guarding his Master George Wombwell who created the first travelling menagerie.
Wombwell was born on 24th December 1777 at Wendon Lofts, Essex - which is just a couple of miles from where I live. He moved to London and in 1804 and had a business as a cobbler in Soho. At about this time, Wombwell purchased two boa constrictors from a South American sailor at the docks and toured the local inns with the two snakes in a box where people would pay him a penny to view the reptiles. Within two weeks he had recouped his original investment. His success encouraged him to build up what became the largest travelling menagerie in Britain.
Success encouraged Wombwell to make further speculations. He bought animals from the local docks and built up a collection of exotic species including lions, zebras and ostriches. In 1810, he founded Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie, an entourage consisting of ten carriages of beasts, which visited the county fairs of Britain. Many animals were bred in captivity and those animals, which died, were disposed of to taxidermists or even exhibited as deceased specimens.
One of the less savoury aspects of Wombwell’s exhibitions was lion baiting in which six bull mastiffs were pitched against one lion, with the lion invariably emerging victorious. Unfortunately for Wombwell his favourite lion, Nero, refused to have anything to do with this, prefering to lie around doing nothing. George therefore had to buy another lion called Wallace to do the fighting.
Wallace was the first lion to be bred in captivity in this country and was born in Edinburgh in1819. He became reknown in 1825, when he was owned by Wombwell and used for the infamous lion baiting and gambling there upon.
When Wallace died in 1838, he was sent from Dudley, W. Midlands to Saffron Walden museum by stagecoach, he had been stuffed with wood shavings on a wood and wire frame and then mounted with his front paw on the figure of a dog.
Wombwell became a favourite of the Royal Court and appeared several times before Queen Victoria. He was once sent for by Prince Albert to solve a problem of the Prince’s sick dogs. Wombwell noticed that their water source was contaminated and a fresh supply would immediately restore them to health. When asked by the Prince what he would like as a reward, Wombwell famously responded, “What can you give to a man who has everything?” Albert presented him with an oak coffin, which Wombwell exhibited as a sideshow, charging a supplementary fee.
When Wombwell died on November 16th 1850 The "Times" newspaper carried his obituary saying that he had made a massive contribution to the study of natural history. , . He is buried in Highgate Cemetery, Swains Lane, London N6 6PJ.
Bostock and Wombwell's Menagerie Entrance 1910
And here’s the wonderful Pathe newsreel of Bostock and Wombwell’s last road trip to Whipsnade in 1931.
