Venice Protestant Cemetery

The Protestant Cemetery in Venice is a part of the municipal cemetery on the island San Michele. It is first of all a cemetery in use, serving the small but living Protestant communities of Venice. It also tells the many stories of individual members of the international communities of the city through the last 200 years. This is an important part of the fascinating multicultural society that still links many nations to Venice.

As all visitors can easily see, the Protestant Cemetery is in urgent need of care, maintenance and restoration. The charitable foundation that runs this website, ARECSM Onlus, Associazione Reparto Evangelico del Cimitero di San Michele is working to improve the situation and at the same time to open a window on this interesting segment of Venetian and international history.

The Protestant Cemetery

The Protestant section of the Civic Cemetery on the Island of San Michele, or the “Reparto Evangelico” as it is known in Italian, is owned by Venice City Council. It is a listed property and has been used for Protestant burials since 1895.

The Protestant presence in Venice goes back centuries. The first written evidence of a Protestant community dates from 1650, when a pastor and a meeting hall was recorded.

There are many individual graves of interest in this cemetery, both because of the fascinating life stories they lead to but also because of the monuments themselves. Here is a shortlist of interesting people buried here:

John McAndrew
(1904 – 1978)

Ilse Bernheimer
(1892 – 1985)

Joseph Brodsky
(1940 – 1996)

Ashley Clarke
(1906 – 1994)

Everdine H. Douwes Dekker
(1819-1874)

Ludwig Theodor Elze
(1823 – 1900)

Carl Filtsch
(1830 – 1845)

Hanna Brunow Franzoi
(1933 – 2003)

Oscar de Hederstjern
(1868 – 1902)

Helenio Herrera
(1916 – 1997)

Erich Kuby
(1910 – 2005)

Hans Wilhelm Meyer
(1824-1895)

Sir William Perry
(1801 – 1874)

Ezra Pound
(1885 – 1972)

Olga Rudge
(1895 – 1996)

Augusto Wolf
(1842 – 1915)

Lars Jacobsen Larssøn
(1784 – 1846)

Johan Ludwig Mowinckel
(1854 – 1906)

Friedrich von Nerly
(1807 – 1878)

Karl (Carlo) Walther
(1851 – 1913)

Teodoro Wolf-Ferrari
(1876 – 1945)

Our priority was to establish an overview of the reparto as a whole before venturing into actually restoring structures or individual graves.

Venice City Council, as the owner of the Island of San Michele and of the Monastery and Cemetery there, is responsible for the infrastructure of the Protestant section; responsibility for upkeep of the graves, on the other hand, is determined by the terms of concessions granted for their construction.

You can read more about what we have done and our current projects here:

Current projects

Past projects

How to support our work

Support Projects Venice Protestant Cemetery

There are several ways you can support our efforts to improve the condition of the Protestant Cemetery in Venice and shed light on its fascinating history.

Old photos tell stories and may contain valuable information for our work. If you have any of the Protestant Cemetery from before 1980, please send a scanned version to our email address: info@www.veniceprotestantcemetery.com

We are looking for relatives of people buried here before the II World War. If you are one, or know any, please send us contact details.

Restoration (work) and stewardship in general costs money. Please support our work, through either our American or Italian accounts. Use one of the following buttons:

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