A palazzo for the posthumous
To let: four small lots with a 99-year (renewable) lease, on an exclusive Venetian island. Fixer-uppers. Illustrious neighbours: Igor Stravinsky, Joseph Brodsky, Emilio Vedova. Starting auction price: around $300,000.
It was not, admittedly, quite so straightforward. But that was the gist of a call for bids that appeared on Venice’s municipal website in March. Up for grabs were four chapel tombs in the cemetery of San Michele, Venice’s “isle of the dead.” The cemetery, built after Napoleon’s administration ordered the residents of Venice to bury their dead outside the city centre, has for more than 200 years been a final resting place for Venetians, as well as a few chosen foreigners given special dispensation to be buried there. Now, that honour will go to the highest bidders. Last year, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro decided to put up for auction five private chapels built by old Venetian families but abandoned for years. The proceeds will be used to restore older sections of the cemetery that have been worn by exposure to the elements. It may not be a palazzo on the Grand Canal, but it’s a rare chance to spend the hereafter — or at least 99 years of it, renewable for another 50 — in an exclusive haunt that is normally open only to Venice residents, relatives of those buried in the cemetery and celebrities with a strong connection to the city.
Be forewarned: The chapels need considerable work and, like a Venice palazzo, will require eternal care. A chapel here needs “the same maintenance as a palazzo in the historic centre,” Massimiliano De Martin, the municipal councillor responsible for urban planning, said during a stroll through the cemetery grounds.
In March, a French entrepreneur secured the Salviati Chapel by bidding about $550,000 (Canadian) in the first auction. The chapel — part of the hemicycle entrance to the cemetery, where two other chapels are up for auction — was in good shape after a recent restoration paid for by the city. The new owner — Dominique Vacher, the director general of Laboratoires Genevrier, a pharmaceutical company — and his wife already owned an apartment in the lagoon city, and decided to extend their stay.
Venice is billed “as the city where happiness is eternal,” he said in a statement issued by City Hall. There will be plenty of room: The tomb chamber previously held seven corpses. The two nearby chapels available each sleep, so to speak, two corpses and countless funerary urns for ashes or bones. Two other chapels — the Venier and the Olivieri — are in other quadrants.
The cemetery was built during the French occupation of Venice, when it was decreed that burying the dead on the main islands was unsanitary. It was later enlarged. Until 1954, all private tombs in the city, whether below or above ground, were leased for eternity. Since then, the city of Venice has leased tombs for a varying number of years. In some cases, leases can be renewed.
“There are more dead Venetians than live ones — it’s a fact,” De Martin said.