Spots in Rome- Keats-Shelley House and the Cimitero Acattolico (Protestant Cemetery)

Keats-Shelley House

     I pair these two ‘spots’ together because of their shared history. These are, definitively (I would say) the most Romantic spots in Rome, that is, Romantic with a capital ‘R’. In the ‘about me’ section, I mentioned that I completed my MA in English literature, specifically Romantic and Sentimental literature during the period 1770-1830. (My degree certificate really is that specific, ha!) Thus, this house is sacred for me. It was rented by second generation Romantic poet John Keats and his travel companion Joseph Severn in November 1820. In England, Keats had been diagnosed with tuberculous earlier in the year, and he decided to make the journey to Italy hoping that the warmer climate would help his condition. Piazza di Spagna was already becoming the hub for expatriates to live and stay while in Rome; thus, Keats and Severn rented this apartment at 26 Piazza di Spagna upon arriving in Italy via Naples. Read more about the history of Piazza di Spagna here. Unfortunately, Keats was not well throughout entire stay in Rome, and he died only a few months later on February 23rd, 1821. As he was only 25 years old, but he wrote with the sage wisdom of one with an eternal soul; his short life has been extended through immortal and haunting verse. Take a fragment of a poem, “This Living Hand” written sometime during 1819, when his health was already of imminent concern; it speaks to the theme of mortality and immortality even in the subtext of the first line/ unofficial title:

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–

I hold it towards you.

What ‘lives’ on are the words that Keats wrote although ‘red life’ will never stream in his mortal body. The omnipresence and dualism of mortality and immortality in his work is what makes many scholars and poetry lovers consider him prophetic; he speaks to his own fleeting existence and the mysteries of our own. John Keats was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, which I will discuss later in this entry.

‘Keats on his Deathbed’, a sketch by Joseph Severn

In this intimate house museum, you can see a sketch by Joseph Severn entitled ‘Keats on his Deathbed’ which embodies the idea that the young poet was ‘angelic’ and torn from life too soon; there seems to be a dark halo around his beatific features; these characterizations manifested in the following century with Victorian poets and critics who admired Keats’ work and afforded him the praise that he did not receive during his short life.

Severn accompanied the image with the words in a letter to another friend, Charles Brown, who was back in England: “He is gone–he died with the most perfect ease–he seemed to go to sleep.” Further on in this letter Severn explains that everything in the room must be destroyed by law for sanitation purposes. Therefore, when you visit this museum today, you will see reconstructions of what the furniture looked like when Keats occupied the far room overlooking the Spanish steps, but the beautiful wooden ceiling inlayed with a detailed flower motif set on a light blue backdrop are original, and in fact, they were recently restored.

Here I am seated in Keats’ room, looking at first edition copies of Romantic works

My fondest memory from my postgraduate studies took place in this room. I was on a research trip and able to look at original, first edition (that is 19th century, in this case) copies of texts I was using to write my MA thesis. The Keats-Shelley house, in addition to serving as a museum open to the public, also has a research library and scholars can apply to use the books from their collection. At the time, there was no space upstairs in the private library room. Thus, I was seated at the desk in Keats’ room, wearing plastic gloves in order to protect the texts, gazing out over the Piazza di Spagna in front of me, completing my research, and truly living an academic dream.

Every time I reenter this room, I recall this fond memory. In more recent years, I have taken my international school students to visit the house as part of a Romantic poetry unit in which we study the poetry of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

     If you google ‘Percy Shelley Apartment in Rome’ you will be presented with misinformation (#internetaccuracy; check your sources! Writers and readers!) that ‘informs’ visitors that poet Percy Shelley also lived in this house at 26 Piazza di Spagna. This is absolutely false. Percy Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley (famous in her own right, arguably more) stayed in Rome multiple times, but each sojourn did not last for too long. During the spring of 1819, for example, they rented an apartment on the Via del Corso, which is very near Piazza di Spagna, but they never lived in this house.  The Shelleys spent more time in Florence, Pisa and on the coast of Liguria. In the spring of 1822, they rented a house in San Terenzo, in the heart of what is now known as the ‘Bay of Poets’ (read about my recent trip here). It was here, on the 8th of July 1822, that Percy Shelley tragically drown while sailing out in the bay. His body washed up on the shores of Viareggio, and he was cremated there. This detailed yet pleasantly readable Guardian article delves into more detail about Shelley’s mysterious drowning.  A famous late 19th century painting by Louis Édouard Fournier depicts a cremation ceremony with Byron, Mary Shelley, Leigh Hunt and Edward Trelawny, but Romantic as this ceremony, is indeed fictional. Read more here. Although Shelley did not die in Rome, like his contemporary John Keats, his ashes were brought here to be buried in the non-Catholic (or protestant) cemetery (You will see both translations used.)

Here is the plaque that asserts Byron stayed in this house at 66 Piazza di Spagna during the spring of 1817. (Again, there is good evidence to suggest this is true, but we cannot be 100% sure)

Back to the Keats-Shelley House. Even though Shelley did not die or live in this house, his legacy in Italy is grand. Thus this house museum is not only dedicated to Keats, the young poet who lived there, but his fellow poet and champion, Percy Shelley. There are many lectures and special exhibitions dedicated to both writers and Romantic literature and culture at large. In fact, the writer who usually completes the ‘trinity’ of second-generation romantics I have not yet mentioned, which is surprising because I focused most research for my dissertation on him: Lord Byron. There are many resources related to Byron at the Keats-Shelley house as well; his name just didn’t make it into the title. If you are interested, however, walk across the street to 66 Piazza di Spagna, ring one of the buzzers to have access to the inside of the building and you will see a plaque commemorating where Byron (most likely) stayed during his 3 weeks in Rome, in the spring of 1817.

Again, you will find misinformation online that suggests Lord Byron and John Keats were neighbors in Piazza di Spagna and stayed in the area at the same time. Although there is great proximity between their residences, this is not true, and Keats arrived over 2 years later. Still, the charming house museum is a beautiful and still rather unfrequented piece of Romantic history in Rome. Admission is only 6 euro, and you will see the building virtually unchanged from when it became a museum in 1909, and an insider’s view overlooking the famed Spanish steps. Find more about admission and opening hours on the official museum website.

For a historical rest stop in the area, visit Caffe Greco (est. 1760) or Babington’s tea rooms (est.1893). Both embody the spirit of the historical 18th-19th century Anglo/European expatriate culture in Rome.

Cimitero Acattolico (Non-Catholic Cemetery)

Piramide di Caio Cestio (Pyramid of Cestius)

  You will find the Cimitero Acattolico (Non-Catholic Cemetery) in a different area of the city from the Keats-Shelley house; it is located in the rione of Testaccio. Find out more about the history of the area here. As mentioned, both John Keats and Percy Shelley are buried in this tranquil albeit solemn sanctuary. This cemetery certainly ranks amongst notorious necropoli around the world such as Père Lachaise in Paris, France , Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. In addition to the foreign John Keats and Percy Shelley, Antonio Gramsci, an Italian, and co-founder of the Italian communist party, is buried here. The melancholy splendor of the place is enough reason to visit, however. The cemetery stands in the shadow of the Piramide di Caio Cestio (Pyramid of Cestius) which was built between 18-12 BCE for a wealthy Roman senator named Gaius Cestius. This monument is found within the walls of the cemetery, and quite close to the grave of John Keats. Keats’ grave stands tall in an open area that is the older area of the cemetery created in the 1700s; graves in this section are sparser, spread out.

Keats’ grave

You will find a full corner equip with a bench around the young poet’s grave. In fact, as a companion in death as well as life, you will see the grave of Joseph Severn. Although Keats’ travelling companion outlived him by six decades, he was buried by his side. Keats reportedly wanted only the phrase “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water” without his name inscribed. This phrase does appear, but his friends, Severn and Charles Brown who was back in England, and Percy Shelley could not help but add a preface:

This grave contains all that was Mortal of a Young English Poet Who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone:

They perpetuated the idea that Keats was at least in part ‘killed’ by the critics of his work, as he did not receive widespread praise for his work during his lifetime. Pictorially, the idea of a life interrupted is represented by a Greek lyre “with four of its eight strings broken 'to show his Classical Genius cut off by death before its maturity' as Severn later interpreted it,” according to the Keats-Shelley house website.

If you move back towards the entrance, the area is more densely packed with graves. This strangely is the ‘younger’ part of the cemetery, created in the mid 1800s. You can walk amongst tall and diverse plant species, observing the funereal imagery mixed with verdant greenery. In fact, one of my favorites, Henry James describes it best in his travel writing entitled The After-Season In Rome, from his late 19th century visits to the eternal city:  

Here is a mixture of tears and smiles, of stones and flowers, of mourning cypresses and radiant sky, which gives us the impression of our looking back at death from the brighter side of the grave.

Percy Shelley’s ashes are buried in a grave near the far wall of this section. Many have commented that Shelley also wrote about the beauty and secular sanctity of this place, rather ironically, in the preface to a poem called Adonais, which was written about Keats’ untimely death and burial. In 1821, Shelley wrote:

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

Regarding great lines on Rome, I cannot help but include stanza XLIX from the body of Shelley’s poem Adonais:

   Go thou to Rome—at once the Paradise,

The grave, the city, and the wilderness;

And where its wrecks like shatter'd mountains rise,

And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress

The bones of Desolation's nakedness

Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

Percy Shelley’s grave stone with his friend Edward Trelawny’s grave stone in the background

When Shelley died the following year, in 1822, his dear friend, and later biographer, Edward Trelawny, decided what poetry to include on his sepulcher in this same cemetery. There is a Latin phrase Cor Cordium (Heart of Hearts) and powerful lines from The Tempest by William Shakespeare, a magical Romance and his last complete play in which a sea storm (Shelley’s cause of death) figures prominently. These lines are from a song that the spirit Ariel sings:

"Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange."

Much like Keats and Severn, Edward Trelawny’s grave rests next to Percy Shelley’s. Trelawny, like Severn, enjoyed a long life, but on his grave Shelley’s words are featured:

These are two friends whose lives were undivided:

So let their memory be, now they have glided

Under the grave: let not their bones be parted,

For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.

This inscription has always saddened me, I must say. In both cases, these dear ‘friends’ to great poets lived longer lives, but their legacies seem only relevant to their more famous companions. I wonder if they ever did truly live for themselves after the death of Keats and Shelley and birth of their legends, legends these men helped crafted. It begs a philosophical question, which I think one cannot help but contemplate in such a place. Which would you prefer: a shorter but rich life and posthumous fame or a longer life and only a supporting actor role for eternity?

As you can see, this space inspires philosophy, poetry, and reflection. I used to visit often on a Sunday morning when I lived in Trastevere. I would stop at a flower stand in the Testaccio market (now relocated) to buy some flowers and I would place them on Keats’ grave. I would sit for a time, sometimes reading, sometimes only sitting with my thoughts. Many years later, with my students on our Romantic literature field trip, I have bought flowers for them to place on the graves. I also ask them to read some of the poetry we have studied in this ‘sacred’ place. The literary connections to this place are profound, and I will feature just a few more before I close.  As I mentioned Henry James wrote his own impressions of this spot, but he also included it in his novella, Daisy Miller, one of my favorite texts to teach. Warning, the quotation contains a massive spoiler for this 19th century text:

Daisy's grave was in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring flowers.

I will close with the words of another literary giant, Oscar Wilde, who commented that the cemetery was ‘the holiest place in Rome’ when he visited in the year 1877. He also wrote a sonnet called “The Grave of Keats” in which he ends with the lines:

Thy name was writ in water—it shall stand:

And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,

As Isabella did her Basil-tree.

Thus, Wilde comments on Keats poetry in his own (both the inscription on his grave ‘writ in water’ and one of Keats’ popular poems from 1818 titled “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil”). The cemetery provides great opportunities for intertextuality, especially throughout the Romantic and Victorian periods, and I urge you to visit and create your own poetic memories. Albeit a bit morbid, my close friends already know, I would like my final resting place to be here, even if this means ashes stealthily scattered within the walls and name ‘writ’ only in the rain water that falls to the ground.

Find access information and opening hours here. The cemetery is free to visit, but donations are encouraged.