As the first survey of Italy’s monumental cemeteries, the book explores the relationship between architecture and politics, or how architecture is formed by political forces. As cities of the dead, cemeteries mirrored the spaces of the living. Against the backdrop of Italy’s unification, they conveyed the power of the new nation, efforts to construct an Italian identity, and conflicts between Church and state. Monumental cemeteries helped to foster the narratives and mentalities that shaped Italy as a new nation.
Hannah Malone is a historian of architecture and modern Italy. After a doctorate at St John’s College Cambridge, she held a fellowship at the British School at Rome and studied fascist military cemeteries. As a Lumley Junior Research Fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge, she is currently working on the architect Marcello Piacentini.