Graphic and Formal Evolution of the Cemeteries of Veneto Analyzed Through Their Plans

Abstract

Funeral architecture has been infrequently drawn in general. There are perhaps quite a few plans of funeral buildings that constitute the heritage of memory through the drawing of pantheons, graves, or memorials. But there is little of the cities of the dead, understood as urban complexes that emerged in Europe between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century to solve the health problems encountered by cities. Faced with the need to create a new urban structure outside of the city, the cemetery as it is known today emerged. Its ideation generated different models, among which is the monumental cemetery, typical of southern European countries such as Italy. This paper includes some of the plans of the main cemeteries of the Italian Veneto region, drawing attention to the importance of these drawings of architectural memory as unexplored graphic heritage. Through the analysis of the plans of the cemeteries of Vicenza, Verona, and Padua, a tour of the evolution of the graphic representation techniques used for their realization is proposed. In parallel, and from a compositional point of view, attention is also directed towards the evolution of their formal configuration. © 2020, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.