DOCUMENTATION 2457

Documentation for Architecture Conservation: La Villetta Cemetery in Parma, Italy

part 1

Cemeteries as Heritage Monument

Experiences for Conservation and Rehabilitation of La Villetta in Parma

by Michela Rossi

Cemeteries are, first of all, heritage monuments. In fact, death constitutes an important matter for each individual’s social life; it is expressed by figuration and symbols, and according to religious beliefs, each culture develops forms and rituals closely related to each other. The anthropologists identify cultures by the treatment given to corpses, in which many funeral artefacts and funerary outfits are involved. The high level of architectural formality of these monuments comes from the attention given to the material quality of the final residence, where the memory is kept alive. Thus, each monument is very distinctive and the gravity given to the passage from life to death is a common feature, which explains the accuracy of the funeral gifts and symbols.
Except for the mausoleums, dedicated to distinguished people, other memorials are usually gathered in specific locations: necropolises, the city of the dead, or cemeteries, meaning resting places. Aiming to represent the city of the living on a transcendent level, together with the respect for the dead, cemeteries have also been related to hygienic matters, with a neat division between the living city and the dead one.Christianity used to bury inside or nearby churches, until the Illuminists imposed again burial sites outside the city  walls, issuing new specific norms and standards, which are reflected in the urban drawing of modern settlements.
In time, the symbolic richness of architecture and its ornaments turned modern cemeteries into open-air museums. This is why each cemetery constitutes a significant heritage, as the main gathering point for the community values.
All cemeteries represent the mutual identifying element of a society, and thus, all of them should be preserved just like any other historical building. Their rehabilitation will also give great improvement to the urban environment.
Cemeteries are a miniature of the city, reproducing its developing process and presenting the same managing issues and thus their conservation and valorisation strategies should be similar. The main focus is on the structure’s functionality, including changes required to respect the new work safety standards, which could contrast with the preservation of the buildings.

The mapping is difficult because of the complexity of the settlements, where elements such as the urban scale fencing of the cemetery and the micro architecture of each individual tomb differ greatly in dimensions. This complexity is reflected in the management, which inevitably affects the general maintenance of the monuments. The ambiguous scale of the cemetery and the big number of monuments in it are some of the main problems concerning their conservation.
The research work carried out in Parma and in the Villetta cemetery itself constitutes a significant example on this matter.

Image 1: The Villeta Cemetery. The today image; Image 2. General view of the cemetery, historic image; Image 3. Detail of the arcade; Image 4. The main alley.

La Villetta is the largest burial site of the town, with several memorials, documenting the activity of the main local artists from the last two centuries. The general planning and the site settlement date back to a debate from the previous century; the original drawings and the essay are still available. The historic cemetery, requiring structural repairs and general rehabilitation, is like a condominium where private  properties or rights, rented and perpetual allotments coexist: the Octagon contains more than 600 tombs and 400 family aedicule (see Carmen Nuzzo, in no. 2/2007 of e_conservation magazine). Together with the chapels inside the two galleries and the monuments in the porch walls, there is an overall of about 1.500 units, many of which are extremely valuable.

Images 5-9. Monuments from La Villetta Cemetery. Details of chapel architecture, sculptures and decorative motifs.

The research work revealed a multiplicity of elements, scales and issues, requiring specific tools and planning of the work that lead to the drawing of a Geographic Information System (GIS) (see Cecilia Tedeschi, A Cemetery Information System).

The architectonic filing of the monumental part of the Villetta Cemetery has been executed within conventions promoted between the City of Parma and the Department of Civil Engineering, Environment, Territory and Architecture of the local University.
This project constitutes a specific type of survey plotting in urban scale architecture knowledge, becoming a useful example for any work of this kind. The enrichment of the existing work is possible, since GIS allows projections, editing and future updates.

The architectonic filing, supported by a quite exhaustive archive research, has been executed in 2005. Nowadays, after some years of study about different projects directly derived from the first one, it is possible to appreciate this experience in relation with the conservation policy, as a first step to the historical cemetery rehabilitation.
The final goal of the filing job was to circumscribe the historic-monumental part of the biggest city cemetery and of all the other cemeteries of the City Council, before proceeding to write a “Cemetery Planning” (called PCm), now required by law.
The cataloguing has been therefore the starting point for a long term research that has already produced some deliverables, like the PCm (see Silvia Ombellini, in no. 2/2007 of e_conservation magazine), and by now it is possible to foresee the next steps.
The cemeteries are complex systems that, from an architectonic point of view, introduce one ambiguous scale between the city’s main structures and the microarchitecture of the particular burials, with constructions inserted one inside the other like China boxes. Besides that, the architecture often merges with the artistic objects, making difficult the distinction between them.

The first result of the cataloguing has been the location of the monumental zone, characterised by the historical memorials built before or short after the Second World War. Italian law imposes special attention to public buildings more than 50 years old. The cataloguing introduced the study of analogous behaviours between the city organism and the cemetery and therefore has delineated the rules for writing the Cemetery Planning.
Meanwhile, the physic importance of the burial settlement historic core required a new specific plan for the right monumental zone (see Elisa Adorni, in no. 2/2007 of e_conservation magazine), in order to guarantee the protection and the rehabilitation of the cemetery as a monument.

The next step was to build a digital cadastre of the cemetery, which is considered important for the conservation management and for the future planning. Most of the properties are temporary and the placements are reused every 10 years (simple earth burials), 40 years (single coffin place) or 99 years (family chapels), depending on the building type. Only the porch arcades and the chapels into the twin galleries seem to be perpetual particular estate.
These projects have also evidenced the possible economic significance, with important profits for the conservation of the monument.
Although the historic cemetery constitutes an open-air museum by itself, it would be wrong to underestimate the funerary value. To be preserved, it should not be transformed in a mere tourist attraction, but it would be advisable to guide the visitors along the path of its significance.
The historical importance of burial architecture needs to be popularized, and the community should be more aware of such valuable artistic monuments.
Because of its characteristics, the entire GIS cannot be destined to the general public. It is available for professionals and experts such as the cemetery managing offices, restorers and academics, but for the public different strategies should be developed.
The historical significance of the cemetery could be better explained by including a “digital museum” into the structure. A “virtual visit” will help the visitor to fully understand the architecture and will encourage a personal visit. We have begun to work on a virtual guide (see Simone Riccardi, in no. 2/2007 of e_conservation magazine) that was conceived like a selective and selected database with classified access to the GIS. The collected documentation, already converted into digital format, is suitable to be added in a HTML structure, building an interactive database with objects descriptions, pictures, drawings, written documents and commentaries. The project should allow future enrichments and additions on sculptures, people and other issues.
This new database of selected objects will only contain the most relevant material of the previous project, allowing the Informative System to be more accessible, accomplishing its promotional aim. Therefore, it seems useful to publish a critical reading of gathered material because the knowledge must be shared. If cemeteries are the memorials of our civic heritage, the evidence of this experience is that knowledge is the first steps towards their conservation and rehabilitation.

Image 10. The South Gallery; Image 11. The South-East Gallery.

Michela Rossi

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, dell’Ambiente, del Territorio e Architettura,

Università degli Studi di Parma
email: michela.rossi@unipr.it

web: www.unipr.it