San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena

What is a Cemetery for a city?

One once said, to see the real picture of a city, visit its open markets and its cemetery. It is the local's reflection of attitude towards life. After visiting (and falling in love with) the **open markets in Athens** and **open markets in Belgrade**, it is now time to present one architectural masterpiece, Aldo Rossi's "San Cataldo Cemetery", in Modena.

A little bit about Modena

Modena is a city on the south side of the **Po Valley,  in the **Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. This ancient town is also the seat of an archbishop. It is particularly known for its automotive industry- the city of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, De Tomaso and Pagani. For food lovers, Modena is the birthplace of "aceto balsamico" or in English, the balsamic vinegar. The territory around **Modena **was inhabited by the Villanovans in the Iron Age, and later on by Ligurian tribes, Etruscans, and the Gaulish Boii. Although the exact date of its foundation is unknown, it is known that it already existed in the 3rd century BC.

Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer, who achieved international recognition in architectural theory mainly by drawing and designing -he also got involved in product design! Being among the most famous and recognized for his theoretical work architects, Rossi is the first Italian architect awarded with a Pritzker Prize. Aldo Rossi was born in 1931 in Milano. In 1966 he made a revolutionary change in the architectural theory, by publishing his work "The Architecture of the City". The book is shifting the attention from the urban principles of modernism to a rediscovery of the traditional European city.

San Cataldo Cemetery

One accident back in April of 1971 was the initial cause of this complex's design. On the road to Istanbul, somewhere between Belgrade and Zagreb, the architect was involved in a serious car crash. During his hospitalization, he began to "hypothesize" on the composition of his body as a series of fractures that had to be put together again.

The ground of the complex was built on an ancient cemetery, containing a large amount of hand carved and engraved statues and tombstones. The cemetery built by Aldo is an analogical route through all these images of the "house of the dead."

Rossi uses a bounding wall to define an axis and break down the rectangle into a series of zones. Rossi's ossuary cube is a commentary on the cemetery, as a "house of the dead". The concept of a series of buildings terminating on a funeral structure is morphed into Rossi's design as well, with the line of rib-like structures closing in a cone shape, which contain the communal grave.

Many find this complex depressing, even ugly, but in reality, it is just a reflection of the visitors' confrontation with the thought of death. Very metaphysical, we can all agree.