Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Detail of the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Detail of the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Detail of the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Detail of the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Detail of the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Detail of the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Alessandro Mendini's design for a family burial crypt at Monumental cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed by Carlo Lavatori for PIN–UP.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

View of the different burial crypts at Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Burial crypt at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Tombstone at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Burial crypt detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Burial crypt at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Alleyway between burial crypts at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Burial crypt at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Alleyway between burial crypts at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Tombstone at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Allewyway between burial crypts at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Allewyway between burial crypts at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Building detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

View at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Building detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Building detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Building detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Burial crypt at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

Burial crypt at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

Alessandro Mendini’s ODE TO MONUMENTALE CEMETERY in Milan

The Monumentale cemetery in Milan is the most romantic place I’ve ever visited. I used to go there as a child, in sun or rain, heat or snow, led by the hand to place flowers on my grandparents’ small but beautiful grave, which had been designed by a gentleman who told me to be famous, the architect Piero Portaluppi (who also built our house). 

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View of the different burial crypts at Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

I walked down the cemetery avenue with awe, afraid of meeting skeletons, and one after another encountered absurd and fascinating monuments to ghosts, a hodgepodge of micro-architectures, a jumble of enormous, languid, grieving marble figures, of angels, of tears in gilded bronze, of crosses — an environment beyond the human that was the summing up, the lapidary catalog, the funereal triumph of the industrialists and bourgeoisie of Milan, all lined up in a patchwork of little palaces. 

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  1. Building detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

  2. Building detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

  3. Building detail at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

  4. Alleyway between burial crypts at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed for PIN–UP by Carlo Lavatori.

This was a triumphant performance outside of logic and context, the board for a giant chess game, a huge city in miniature, a backstage full of love. For to be true to the game, Milanese high society had to buy both a box at La Scala and a tomb at the Monumentale, designed by a famous architect and covered with rhetorical inscriptions. 

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Alessandro Mendini's design for a family burial crypt at Monumental cemetery in Milan, Italy. Photographed by Carlo Lavatori for PIN–UP.

And that’s how, in the 1960s, I also came to build, on the edge of a gravel path, a severe expressionist chapel with macabre inhabitants.

Text by Alessandro Mendini (1931–2019).

Photography by Carlo Lavatori.

Taken from PIN–UP 16, Spring Summer 2014.