beehelm0410
- Jan 23, 2023
- 4 min read

Veni Vidi Vici - Roaming in Rome : Friday, 27 December 2019

Photographic account of the Roaming in Rome's explorers of their last Friday in Rome, last Friday of 2019

Friday, 27 December we set off on a fine and sunny yet rather cool winter’s morning to explore the Protestant Cemetery. This cemetery is described as “one of the finest places in the world to be buried …. a peaceful oasis of green next door to the Pyramid of Caius Cestius” in the rione of Testaccio. It is more properly known as the Cimitero Acattolico, or non-Catholic cemetery and this lovely spot houses the graves of Keats and Shelley. This is a view of the Pyramid and Porta San Paolo from the one side of the cemetery (and we walked around and around looking for the entrance but eventually found it!)

The Cimitero Acattolico ('Non-Catholic Cemetery') of Rome, also referred to as the Cimitero dei protestanti ('Protestant Cemetery') or Cimitero degli Inglesi ('Englishmen's Cemetery'), is the final resting place of non-Catholics including, but not limited to, Protestants or British people.

The earliest known burial is that of a University of Oxford student named Langton in 1738.

The gravestones of Joseph Severn, John Keats’s devoted friend, and John Keats (unmarked) are situated in the cemetery side by side.

Keats died in Rome of tuberculosis at the age of 25. He is buried in the cemetery. His epitaph, which does not mention him by name, is by his friends Joseph Severn and Charles Armitage Brown, and reads:

“This grave contains all that was mortal, of a young English poet, who on his death bed, in the bitterness of his heart, at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraven on his tombstone: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.“

We encountered lots of cats in and around the cemetery

Look closely to see another cat near this door at the rear of the Pyramid

Two more cats ....

In 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a sailing accident off the Italian Riviera. When his body washed up upon the shore, a copy of Keats' poetry, borrowed from Leigh Hunt, was discovered in his pocket. The book was doubled back as though it had been put away in a hurry. He was cremated on the beach near Viareggio by his friends, the poet Lord Byron and the English adventurer Edward John Trelawny. His ashes were sent to the British consulate in Rome, and interred in the Protestant Cemetery some months later.

Allegedly, Shelley's heart supposedly survived cremation and was snatched out of the flames by Trelawny, who subsequently gave it to Shelley's widow, Mary. When Mary Shelley died, the heart was found in her desk wrapped in the manuscript of "Adonais," the elegy Shelley had written the year before following the death of Keats, in which the poet urges the traveller, "Go thou to Rome ...". Shelley and Mary's three-year-old son William was also buried in the Protestant Cemetery.

In 1889, Shelley's heart was finally buried, encased in silver, with the son who had survived him, Sir Percy Florence Shelly. His gravestone in the Protestant Cemetery is inscribed: Cor cordium ("heart of hearts"), followed by a quotation from Shakespeare's The Tempest:

“Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea change,

Into something rich and strange.”

As evidenced from above photos, a large number of cats have sanctuary in the cemetery and there is a collection plate at the entrance for donations for the feeding and welfare of the cats. And we discovered tombstones to those cats who have trotted over the rainbow bridge.

The Rome War Cemetery, a short distance from the Protestant Cemetery, lies alongside and within the Aurelian Walls of the ancient city of Rome. We were fascinated to discover that on the cemetery website the combination number for the padlock at the cemetery is displayed as the cemetery has to be padlocked outside of the gardeners’ working hours due to frequent theft and vandalism.

On 3 September 1943 the Allies invaded the Italian mainland. The invasion coinciding with an armistice entered with the Italians who then re-entered the war on the Allied side. Progress through southern Italy was rapid despite stiff resistance, however, the he advance was checked for some months at the German winter defensive position known as the Gustav Line. In January 1944, operations landed troops behind the German lines at Anzio, and a breakthrough was not achieved until 18 May when, after fierce fighting, Cassino finally fell to the Allies. The continuation of the German withdrawal resulted in Rome being taken on 3 June. The cemetery was started shortly afterwards and was used mainly for burials from the occupying garrison; however a few graves were brought in from the surrounding country. Some soldiers and airmen who died as prisoners of war in Rome are also buried there. The Rome War Cemetery was designed by Louis de Soissons and contains 426 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War.

We were fascinated by this grave in the Rome War Cemetery and were intrigued as to why a little boy would have been buried there and not in the Non-Catholic Cemetery. I did try to do some internet sleuthing about this but could find nothing further beyond photographs of the gravesite.

Walking from the War Cemetery to Trappizzino in Testaccio

Trapizzini and suppli for lunch at Trapizzini, Testacio at Via Giovanni Branca, 88, 00153 Roma RM

Trapizzino, a typical Roman street food, are handheld stuffed pizza, fabulously cheap and so delicious.

Suppli, another staple Roman street food, are Italian snacks consisting of a ball of rice with tomato sauce. They were originally filled with chicken giblets, mincemeat or provatura, but are now made mixed also with a piece of mozzarella; the whole morsel is soaked in egg, coated with breadcrumbs and then fried ….. Sensaziole!!