San Cataldo Cemetery

The older section dates from the 19th century and was designed by Cesare Costa. It is laid out as a rectangle with Doric arcades, tympana and burial niches.

For the extension the city of Modena held a competition in 1971, which drew around fifty entries. The winning design, "L'azzurro del cielo" ("The blue of the sky"), was by Aldo Rossi and Gianni Braghieri. Building began in the 1970s and the cemetery was inaugurated in 1984. To this day the design has been only partly realised.

The first structure a visitor meets is a windowless cube pierced only by square openings, which serves as an ossuary. Rossi called it a house of the dead. It was originally intended as a memorial to the fallen of the world wars and the Resistance and only later became an ossuary. The ossuaries are arranged in a triangle that leads to a building in the form of a truncated cone, lit from above and used as a common grave. Plain volumes in brick tones and strict geometry make the place a destination for anyone interested in architecture and the culture of remembrance.