At the Foot of the Pyramid
until

At the Foot of the Pyramid

300 years of the cemetery for foreigners in Rome

“The most beautiful and most dignified cemetery I have ever set eyes on”, declared the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Since the heyday of the Grand Tour, non-Catholic foreigners in Rome have been buried close to the pyramid-shaped tomb of Caius Cestius. The picturesque spot has always captivated not only painters but also writers as diverse as Goethe, Henry James and Gabriele D’Annunzio. In the Roman display, numerous artists and their works are represented, amongst them J.M.W. Turner, Jacques Sablet, Jakob Philipp Hackert and Ettore Roesler Franz. A large number of these views has never been shown in Italy before. The unprecedented selection of paintings conveys the beauty of this tranquil corner of the Eternal City and renders comprehensible the fascination that it still exerts on visitors today.