Enlargement of the cemetery of Casarza Ligure, Genoa

General view of the cemetery with the new intervention
  • General view of the cemetery with the new intervention General view of the cemetery with the new intervention
  • Detail of the chapel's portal Detail of the chapel's portal
  • Frontal view towards the chapel from the lower terrace Frontal view towards the chapel from the lower terrace
  • Frontal view towards the chapel from the intermediate terrace Frontal view towards the chapel from the intermediate terrace
  • Details of the pavings Details of the pavings
  • Details of the pavings Details of the pavings
          Condividi
Client: Municipality of Casarza Ligure
Chronology: Design: 1982 - Realization: 1984-1986
Architectural design: Mario Gallarati

Works manager: Mario Gallarati
Contractor: A.R.E.S. srl


This intervention comes to complete others which had been started according to a previous project of the Town Administration and connected to some general layouts: excavations, containment walls, predisposed tracing of the enclosure walls. In particular, the interventions effected so far had only consisted in transforming a stretch of the sloping hill-side into three successive plane terraces, along which the graves would be set, so deferring to a future project the organization of the inside routes and of the connexions between the different terraces.
Therefore, the main theme the project was to face consisted chiefly in the problem, so far unsolved, of the spatial-architectural organization of the new structure.
Now, first of all, the new project concerns the architectural definition of the system of the spatial-distributive plant as a whole, organized on a central axis, as a prosecution of the axis of the old cemetery along the secondary ridge running from the hill of Verici down to the valley bottom, to reach San Michele parish church.
All along the central axis are scattered the single “episodes” of the new cemetery: the atrium-staircase system with tong-like double flight of steps to connect the entrance, at Q. 0.00, with the two first terraces at Q. 0.64 and 3.64, following a solution typical of the architecture of the gardens of the Genoese villas; the chapel for funeral honours with annexed premises and semicircular little square facing it, at Q. 5.44, a real “joint” of the space plant where all unevenness find their solution.
The architecture of the complex tends to the definition of a unitary whole whose backstage is the semicircular exedra wall of the system chapel-square; the choice of the materials and of the finishing elements aims at a correct connection with the building style of the place and of Liguria in general, both regarding the sandstone plastering of the surfaces of the central system - a plastering rough-cart for the surrounding walls and for the secondary (minor) works - both for what concerns the colours (the red and the yellow of the near by parish church), both finally for the stone works (sand-stone steps, covering, frameworks) and for the paving - lime-stone and bricks “a coltello” for the terraces at Q. 0.00 and 3.64; black and white sea pebbles for the church square at Q. 5.44.