The Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno is a marble labyrinth where theatrical colonnades, cypress-lined avenues, and sculptures of startling realism make you half expect the figures to spring to life.
Ernest Hemingway described it as “one of the wonders of the world”, and he was far from the only celebrated traveller to fall under its spell. Yet beyond its romantic grandeur and faded splendour, this 19th-century masterpiece of funerary art also tells a story about Genoa and its ambitions.