The English Cemetery: A Melancholic Spoon River

This tour takes you on path that unveils and revives the lives of the Foreigners who fell in love with Florence, for its beauty and atmosphere. We explore the steps of those who came here and embraced Florence as a ‘home away from home’. 

Throughout the 1800 and 1900s from the period when the Grand Duchy was under the Lorraine, Florence was the main destination for a community of foreign visitors and residents. 

The charismatic streets of Florence and her surrounding hills, populated with villas and gardens, became their preferred setting during their stay in Florence. They were attracted to the very cheap living costs, the milder climate and, most pleasingly, the colourful cultural life and open atmosphere.

In 1827, just outside the medieval walls of Florence, the first international cemetery was built. The Swiss Reformed Evangelical Church acquired some land and brought to life a place to lay the dead. Ancient stories of famous novelists, activists and slaves are encapsulated in a sort of melancholic ‘spoon river’. In the ‘English Cemetery’, there are over one thousand graves that represent sixteen nations; The British forming the majority, followed by the Swiss, the North Americans, the Italians and the Russians, all of whom are buried here.

• We will take up a fascinating, nostalgic journey of the history of a cosmopolitan Florence. 
• Revive the stories and lives of some of those who are celebrated still to this day, such as, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who finds her resting place next to her friends Theodosia and Francis Trollope, and Isa Blagden known as the ‘Lady of Bellosguardo’.
• We will learn about the not very amiable but esteemed author of ‘Imaginary Conversations’ Walter Savage Landor, and the story of Fanny Hunt who died at thirty-three years in Villa Medici in Fiesole, wife of the pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt, who personally designed her sarcophagus.
• We will witness Florence as the heart of much inspiration, such as for the American sculptor Hir

**Note: This tour may be paired with the tour Florence in the 1800s: The Capital and the Grand Tour.

**Note: There are no admission tickets for this tour however the Swiss Reformed Evangelical Church appreciates even a small offer.