Monumental Cemetery of Bonaria

Several famous people were buried in Bonaria, including the canonical archaeologist Giovanni Spano, the tenor Piero Schiavazzi and General Carlo Sanna.

The cemetery is sited on a necropolis that had been used by Punic, Roman and early Christian communities of Cagliari; several ancient caves were carved into the limestone of the hill, formerly used as tombs.

Until 1929 the church of Santa Maria de Portu Gruttis, also known as San Bardilio, stood by the entrance, dating back to the 12th century.

White statue symbolicly peer through the cypresses and huge bouquets of flowers, wreaths, left at recent funerals, have preserved some of their freshness."

The cemetery contains many artistic memorials and burials of notable people, including the mayor of Cagliari Ottone Baccaredda, the historian Pietro Martini, the canon and archaeologist Giovanni Spano (buried in a tomb he himself designed and built, reusing archaeological remains[1]).

Other interesting tombs and chapels were built between the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries by artists such as Giuseppe Sartorio, Tito Sarrocchi, Cosimo Fadda, Andrea Ugolini, Emanuele Giacobbe, Giovanni Pandiani and others, providing a wide variety of tastes and styles, from neoclassical through Realism and Symbolism to Art Nouveau.

Nearby is the monument to Warzée Frances, wife of a Belgian entrepreneur, comprising a group of sculptures executed by Sartorio in 1894, which includes an effigy of the son of the deceased, raising a blanket covering his mother, lying on a bed and bent as if to kiss her face.

Behind the graves of the war dead is the so-called "square of San Bardilio", named after the ancient church that stood in this area until 1929.

The walls that surround the square are home to, among others, the tomb of Ottone Baccaredda (1849–1921), a famous mayor of Cagliari, who promoted the construction of the Palazzo Civico (Town Hall) and the Bastion of Saint Remy.

Opposite the Calvi monument is the memorial to lawyer Giuseppe Todde, a statue of a woman praying at the base of a pillar surmounted by a cross-shaped bust depicting the deceased, executed by Sartorio in 1897.

The monument to the Parisian banker Victor Camille Fevrier, is a marble bust of the deceased, draped by an angel, by Giuseppe Sartorio (1898).

Infants and children were buried closest to the chapel and hold emotional monuments, such as the sculpture for Maria Ugo Ortu (died aged two) comprising the child resting by a broken column behind a short balustrade in trachyte stone from Serrenti, symbolizing the boundary between life and death.

The painting caused controversy with Joseph of Arimathea pictured as a gravedigger, Mary Magdalene appearing dishevelled, and Christ's body stiff and rigid.