DOCUMENTATION 2217
Documentation for Architecture Conservation:  La Villetta Cemetery in Parma, Italy

part 2

a project coordinated by Michela Rossi

Formal References in Funerary Architecture
by Maria Carmen Nuzzo

With the advent of the consumer society and the standardisation of life, the city of the living has created homogeneous neighbourhoods of dormitories and globalised malls and the city of the dead has been filled with crowded burial chambers in anonymous and “normalized” structures. The modern culture has created the “not places”, which means spaces lacking identity, non relational and with no history. The loss of the sense of life identity is expressed by the loss of the sense of death, so that “the spaces to spend one’s life and death” have lost their “reason for existence”1. The space for death, which the modern world with its hedonistic and omnipotent mentality wants to ward off and remove, is the place where one can listen to the story of life: in cemeteries, evil and virtue crystallize for eternity. Giving  importance to the grave as a place of exchange between the living and the dead, place which encourages the correspondence of dating meaning, as Foscolo2 reminds us, means rediscovering the memory of those who live in the silence of the boulevards,the memory that appears like ruins in the green lushness of grass3.

The cemetery of the ideal town of Chaux (N. Ledoux 1775 d.C.)

The city of the dead in Parma, founded by Maria Luigia inside the suburban villa, is organised in the same way as the city f the living, according to the edict of St. Cloud⁴.

 The quality of the shapes and architecture of the cemetery, which is expressed by measurements and archival research to define its monumental aspect, is important in the development of the new funerary typologies that accompanied the post-enlightenment rebirth in the out-oftown necropolis.The layout of Parma cemetery refers to the architectural aspects of the enclosure and to the description of these places iven over to burial which is suggested by Francesco Milizia⁵.

The architectural shapes of the arcades joining on the axes of the portico follow the typology of the columbarium found in early Christian catacombs and burial chapels. The significant elements of the cemetery are: the geometric and symbolic  centre marked by the orthogonal axes; the austerity and seriousness of the Doric order; the crosses on top of the obelisks, which dissolve the reminiscence of pagan cultures in Christian symbolism; the fronts and the different parts of the  entrances, representing the relation between the burial places and the outside areas and mainly, the outside enclosure. “Sacred Enclosure” is a widespread expression that implies as well anthropologic and symbolic meanings: it is an arrangement that indicates a separation and a segregation but also follows acts of acknowledgement and implies care, assures protection from and towards the outside. It is an erected border that characterises and gives architectural complexity and sense to the paths, to the subdivisions and to the logic of the building.
The Villetta cemetery became a place visited to recall memories. It is reachable by going down a long boulevard with trees that from 1862 onwards has connected the cemetery to the city of the living, as documents and iconographic witnesses demonstrate.
The tombs and the burial chapels, witnesses of a stylistic vocabulary ranging from Neo-Medieval to Neo-Byzantine and from Neo-Romanic to Neo-Rococo, reflect an architecture whose symbolic values and formal elements derived from a burial culture becoming the physical features of the expression of the memory.

1. Marc Augè, 2005, Not places. Introduction to an anthropology of surmodernità, Eleuthera.

2. U. Foscolo, 1856, from poem “Sepolcri”

3. L. Sciascia, 1952, The flower of poetry romanesca, Caltanisetta, (with a preface P.P. Pisolini)

4. State Archive Parma, Governatorato di Parma, 1817, busta 543.

5. F. Milizia, 1972, Principles of civil architecture, Finale 1781, rist. anstatica dell’ed. 1847, Milano, Mazzotta, pp. 331-333.

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The Urban Planning of Parma Cemeterial System

by Silvia Ombellini

Like Laudomia, every city has at its side another city whose inhabitants are called by the same name: it is the Laudomia of the dead, the cemetary. (...) The more the Laudomia of the living becomes crowded and expanded, the more the expanse of tombs increases beyond the walls.
From Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

The cemetery is “another city”. Its foundation and its increase are similar to the urban one. The cemeterial system, which in Parma was born in the last half of 19th century, presents various analogies with the urban system. Cemeteries are orientated according to the roman centuriation. They are characterised by the presence of the external wall, in analogy to the urban wall, and by the symbolism of the  centre. Since the Second World War, the plot of the cemetery has become untidy, chaotic and anonymous, like that of the city. The city of the dead has spread out, and its limit has come nearer the living city. Today the space of relation between the two cities is strategic for their regenerations.

The cemetery planning, which is required by Italian law, is strictly connected with the urban planning. In 2004 the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, through a specific rule (L.R. 19/04), has imposed to all the municipalities the cemetery planning. Parma is one of the first cities in Emilia-Romagna that made a cemetery plan, approved in 2007. This project is called “PCm” (Cemeterial Planning). The main objectives of this plan are: to protect the historical architectures, to regulate the growth of structures, to improve their quality and to draw new spaces like memorial gardens. The cemetery planning started by the detailed research of these places from their origins to the present state, in order to focus themes, problems and visions for the future. In the past, cemeteries were important public spaces for the city. The project intended to recover this public function, without alienating the cemetery use. Cemeteries, which were born as meeting places for the society of the 19th Century, have been progressively ghettoized from the city and from the public living. Now it is essential that cemeteries should recover their original role of public spaces.
They are stone archives of the city, places of silence and memory, strongly connected with the landscape and the urban space.
The first step of the PCm is the estimation of demographic and mortality trend in order to approximate the needs and to program the increase of the new cemeterial structures.

The knowledge of the economic, demographic, social and urban changes has been the point of departure of a search of longer distance that has produced the PCm.
To limit the growth of cemeteries is the main choice of the project in order to avoid the risk of abandonment of the existent structures. Therefore the PCm foresees new alternative uses for the historical structures, optimization of use of the existent structures, and exclusion of incongruous parts, in order to recover the original quality.
In the historical structures, the project foresees the increase in value of the main architectures, the recovery of original values, material and forms, and the support of their use.
The historical parts, in particular the “Villetta Octagon”, have to accentuate the role of the memory, and will be designated to the graves of illustrious citizens. This part will be a museum of the town memory. The project foresees the valorisation of open spaces, through the design of internal gardens, the recovery of trees and vegetation, the  reorganization of access and internal routes and the insertion of monuments, fountains and signs.

The Master Plan for the Safeguarding and Restoration of La Villetta
by Elisa Adorni

The Master Plan for the safeguarding and the restoration (afterward called PPO) of the Villetta’s monumental Octagon is part of a larger intervention of the cemetery planning system in Parma. The PPO is the completion of the Cemetery Rules recently adopted.The development of a specific rule, with the individualisation of the historical centre of the urban cemetery, has allowed the evaluation of the historical-architectural heritage of the monumental cemetery.

Editing the Master Plan has probed the analysis of the monumental part, which needs safeguarding and exploitation. Therefore, the preliminary remarks of the Master Plan were to stimulate the environmental qualification and the architectural exploitation in order to guarantee a continuity of use of the historical structures.
The “safeguarding” does not mean “musealisation” but control over the quality of the interventions, maintaining alive the monument in respect to the regulations in use.
The Master Plan has tried to individualize an alternative use of all the existing structures, with the exception of  perpetual graves and valuable monuments.
Following the Cemetery Rules, the PPO also tries to promote the planning and to delineate specific planning lines. This project concerns the restoration of preserved monuments and also the planning of collective spaces (garden and paths). Studies about the Monumental Octagon and about the type of restoration interventions for the historical building and the arcade were conducted. To reconstruct the original unity will require to foresee layer analysis (stratigraphies) of the painted surfaces of the arches and the galleries. However, different problems arose: coexistence of different juridical titles of “ownership”, presence of low quality interventions, construction of incongruous elements, tendency to space  saturation - not always in accordance with the general project of the cemetery, existence of overdimensioned private graves, difficulty to adapt the historical constructions to the rules, precarious state of care of some historical architectures - with evident structural disarrangements and superficial degradation of the exterior layer.
The plan is also useful as control for new future interventions. The PPO characterizes the destinations, the categories, the interventions and the intervention rules.The intervention rules must consider the variety of monumental elements and their specific and original use.

Different ways of intervention can be individualized: the greatest architectures (sectors) and the interior of the chapels and the arches (units) are all subjected to safeguarding. The PPO allows to perform interventions of restoration directly on the single unit or partial consolidation of the structures.

There are 5 categories of intervention, as follows:
- Safeguarding: includes objects (chapels, graves, arches) and artistic-architectural records corresponding to a particular historic memory for the city;

- Maintenance: includes objects (chapels, graves, arches) of high architectural and artistic quality;
- Exploitation: includes historical objects that do not have particular artisticarchitectural merit and the non-historical objects with incongruous punctual elements, on which the transformation (e.g. plastic fixture) is preferred;

- Remodelling: includes non-historical objects of scarce quality with incongruous elements, on which the transformation is referred (covering material);

- Morphological Reconfiguration: includes incongruous objects which need morphology, material and dimension reconfiguration. This sort of intervention is only for graves and aedicules.

For chapels, arcades and aedicules, classified by categories of intervention, there are specified ordinary maintenance recommendations.

For the monumental sectors (galleries and arcade) we have consulted the archive documents to analyse the original project indications (specifications of a building contract) and to compile specific interventions of restoration.
The PPO gives also general indications about compatible materials to use in the new chapels and graves and in every kind of interventions in the monumental Octagon, with the specific intention to avoid the presence of incongruous elements.
These documents are intended to be consulted in the future, serving the next restoration interventions. Finally, the obtained files allowed us to compile a catalogue of references, which were integrated into a technical glossary that is able to give more useful indications on the constructive technologies and on the used techniques and materials.
The Master Plan (PPO) is a complex of forecast rules for future administration and it aims to the safeguarding of the historical monuments inside the Villetta Cemetery. The PPO includes some planning proposals to increase the value of the Octagonal monument through new and alternative uses of its structures.

Image 1: The Porch Arcades - the initial state of conservation; Image 2: The Porch Arcades - the initial state of conservation.

The Virtual Museum

The Memory of the Cemetery Heritage

by Simone Riccardi

The idea of a Virtual Museum comes from the need to control and to distribute a complex data system. The research about the Villetta cemetery developed by the University and Municipality of Parma - has generated a great deal of historical, social, artistic and iconographic information. The main goal of the virtual museum is to organize this information through routes of knowledge and tools of research. The virtual museum should not replace the real space of the cemetery, instead, it should invite to a personal visit inside the Villetta.

At the entrance of the virtual museum, the visitor can see all the possible “routes of memory” so he can plan his virtual  trip inside the cemetery. The cemetery is the memory of the city and hence the virtual routes are named “routes of memory”.
Moreover, the visitor can switch to a real trip inside the Villetta where he can find a map with relevant points of visit, and some useful information, like the schedule of the cemetery, how to reach, etc.
The first route of memory that the visitor can choose is the history of the cemetery foundation. The visitor can browse by video, text and images through the main stage of the plan and the construction of the cemetery, starting from the history ofthe duchess Maria Luigia.
Another route of visit passes through the stories of the main illustrious citizens’ life, which are all “inhabitants” of the Villetta. The museum route narrates the lives and the works of musicians, writers, architects, artists and politicians. Therefore, the cemetery looks like a family photo book of the city, made in stone.
The last route leads the guests inside the artistic richness of the Villetta cemetery. The visitor can see and learn more about architectural works, as chapels, arches, sculptures, mosaics, paintings and basreliefs made by important local artists.

Each visitor can draw and print his personal map, in which he can bookmark his own route with his relevant points of interest. The memory of the city past becomes readable through a system of virtual routes interlaced with each other.
The ways of the city past weave themselves with the routes of the present visitors, resulting in new maps of favourite paths of memory.

About this project

Documentation and Architecture Conservation: La Villetta Cemetery in Parma, Italy
A project coordinated by Michela Rossi
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, dell’Ambiente, del Territorio e Architettura,
Università degli Studi di Parma

web: www.unipr.it
email: michela.rossi@unipr.it

About the authors:

Maria Carmen Nuzzo

PhD student in Civil Engineering at the University of Parma, she graduated in Architecture in Milan. She is interested in the study of funerary architecure and symbols and collaborates in teaching Architectural Drawing.

Silvia Ombellini

PhD student in Forms and Structures of Architecture at the University of Parma, she obtained her architect degree in Florence. She is interested in architecture and urban design and collaborates with the City Planning Office of Parma.

Elisa Adorni

PhD student in Forms and Structures of Architecture at the University of Parma, she graduated in Architecture. She is interested in architecture conservation and structural rehabilitation of historic architecture.

Simone Riccardi

PhD student in Forms and Structures of Architecture at University of Parma, he graduated in Architecture at the University of Florence. His main interests are digital applications and urban planning.

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