The Protestant Cemetery in Rome is a different place. Different than the ancient monuments, the Baroque churches, the bustling commercial life. Tucked away behind the Pyramid of Cestius, it is lush and crowded with slabs of silent stone remembering the dead, mostly English and Americans who came to Rome, stayed for a while, and died.
It was raining the day we went (Friday), so that made wandering and studying the tombstones not an option, but what I was able to take in plunged me right in the midst of a Grand Tour, of Romantics and artists, diplomats and writers – and so poignantly at times, their children who briefly flourished but then faded, remembered here in a foreign land even if their parents had to move on.
Shelly is buried here, as well as Keats: