Museo della Certosa

Bologna's monumental cemetery preserves the history of a fourteenth-century charterhouse transformed into a civic burial ground. Models, reliefs and documents relate the complex's architectural and funerary history to its cloisters and courtyards.

Why it matters

The Certosa complex combines the history of a fourteenth-century Carthusian monastery with Bologna's monumental cemetery, established in 1801. A museum section documents the transformation of monastic buildings and courtyards into a civic burial ground and preserves models, reliefs and other materials related to the cemetery's history.

What to notice

The Certosa began as a Carthusian monastery in 1334, was suppressed at the end of the eighteenth century and reopened in 1801 as the city's cemetery. The church of San Girolamo, with a mid-seventeenth-century painting cycle by Bolognese artists, preserves the monastic core. Models, reliefs and artworks document changes in funerary art and the cemetery's development. Its cloisters and courtyards form an architectural setting shaped by successive periods.

Context and history

The cemetery was founded in 1801 within the structures of the Carthusian convent built from 1334. It developed as both a burial ground and a setting for civic memory, with extensive nineteenth-century sculpture. The city's formal interpretation of the complex developed in the late twentieth century, including a dedicated museum office and later civic-museum stewardship. The complex is included in the UNESCO listing of Bologna's porticoes and was designated a monumental and historic cemetery of Emilia-Romagna in 2023.