Today's date, the anniversary of the death of my paternal grandfather, is an opportunity to return to Verano for a restyling of touch-ups with thin paint on the engravings of his tombstone which dates back to the 1930s, having already been the tomb of my great-great-grandparents (as my maternal grandfather's grandparents) born in the second half of the nineteenth century shortly before the Unification of Italy. The cemetery was built starting in 1809 and expanded over time; this great-great-grandfather of mine, owner of a construction company, built some buildings there including part of the Military Shrine built between 1922 and 1931, the year of his death. Verano, located in the Tiburtino district, adjacent to the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le mura, takes its name from the ancient land that belonged to the rich Verani family (agro Verano), a senatorial gens at the time of the Roman Republic. Since then it has expanded so much that nowadays in order not to get lost in the real labyrinth of the various numbered zones, especially if you are not familiar with it and have no relatives buried there, it is better to follow the maps displayed on signs located in several points installed last year 2023, as well as recent extraordinary maintenance interventions, some still in progress, starting from the entrance Quadriportico up to the glass panels of parapets and fences of the individual squares. Nowadays the Verano is considered to be a real open-air museum, where many illustrious figures from History, Art and Culture and the more recent world of Entertainment rest. Next to the family chapel where my great-great-grandparents were (then moved and never used again with 27 places deep) there is the tomb of Ettore Petrolini: the famous actor, cabaret artist, singer, playwright, screenwriter and writer; tomb that was rebuilt after the bombing of 19 July 1943 of the adjacent railway yard in San Lorenzo that involved the Verano. Another bomb hit (without exploding!) the roof of the chapel of my great-great-grandfathers (Count Giuseppe Ginanni who died in 1919 and his wife Elisa, 1933) whose bodies were immediately transferred and the roof repaired with a sheet of metal, but it was no longer used even for my great-grandfather's son who was buried in Rimini where he had moved permanently, although he alternated with Rome and was well known for his long-lived life until 1990 when I was already twenty years old. My wife Clelia, my great-grandmother countess, was not buried in the chapel either, who for me was an additional grandmother because she lived long. She lived in Rome from the time of her marriage, first in the villa in Via Quintino Sella • Places ROME Villa Ginanni Fantuzzi then in Lungotevere Flaminio and in Parioli. She rests in the cemetery of Trieste, as desired, as her hometown which at her birth was still Austro-Hungarian Empire! Anecdote: she used to prepare Palačinke for me and my brother as children, that is, crêpe suzette with a typical Hungarian recipe, but still used in Istria and Trieste ex Empire. Their daughter Susi, my maternal grandmother countess even though she lived in Rome, is also buried in Milano Marittima; the place where the villa by the sea was since 1939 in the elegant pine forest and then the new house by the sea where she became a permanent resident passing away almost a centenarian in 2019. The fortune of having had this long-lived grandmother, like great-grandparents, balanced the lack of not having known, instead, the two male grandfathers, paternal and maternal, who passed away still in their fifties a few years before and the year after my birth; which therefore I only know from photos and from the almost legendary stories of my parents since I was a child when many people came to bring a flower and nowadays, decades later, I return alone! At Verano, in addition to the aforementioned empty chapel, there are other tombs. The niche of great-great-grandparents, parents of my great-grandmother Leda (mother of my maternal grandfather) where my paternal grandfather from Padua who passed away in Rome was added. Then the niche of my maternal grandfather added to the mother, my great-grandmother; while her husband, another great-grandfather, rests in a small niche not far away dating back to the 1920s of his death at only 33 years of age: • Places ROME Who were the greatest ... Always at Verano a flower for the tombs of family friends: from a high school friend of my grandfather, a certain Franca, with a statue in the Quadriportico, to a classmate of mine, Bianca Pouchain, with a chapel in the Pincettto, the upper part of the cemetery on the Via Tiburtina side. The entire Verano in this period of late May, with all the plants in bloom in various colors as well as the typical evergreen cypresses, appears very different from the dark winter scenery of the Day of the Deceased: • Places ROME Verano and Flaminio A celebration felt by us Romans, as Carlo Verdone recalls when speaking of the Verano part of the Capital, a citadel in the city and even more linked to those who have relatives buried here such as the many famous people, but all equivalent when dead as Totò warned in his famous poem 'A Livella; among other things inspired when speaking of heraldry with my great-grandfather Ginanni by the family motto: Mors Omnia Aequat Rome, 27 May 2024