The Recoleta cemetery is perhaps the strangest place I have ever seen.

 

This city of the dead contains 60,000 bodies in hundred of mausoleums built like row houses. Perhaps the Via Appia in its heyday gave the same impression, but the Via Appia was not in the best neighborhood in Rome.

The monuments are neoclassical

 

or art nouveau

 or Mussolini-esque

 or just plain strange

 On the outside of the Greek Revival gate to the cemetery is Requiescant in pace – May they rest in peace.On the inside of the gate (to be viewed by the dead) is Expectamus Dominum – We await the Lord. 

On the Day of Resurrection this place will be as crowded as the gate the Buenos Aires airport. I sure it will be a cheerful chaos, and I hope, as at the airport, everyone finally makes it.

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