Today we want to talk to you about one of the least known parts of Madrid's cultural heritage: funerary art. Very relevant and an essential element to know the architecture and sculpture of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th.

We celebrate that the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Community of Madrid has launched a program of guided visits to the main necropolises of Madrid, the campaign is called Inevitable Monuments, and was developed between the months of November and December 2015.

Its main objective is to show an important part of our cultural heritage, since Madrid's cemeteries host interesting samples of funerary art of all the stylistic trends developed between Neoclassicism and Modernism.

There are four enclaves that are visited with Inevitable Monuments:
– Sacramental of San Isidro
Sacramentals of Saint Just
Almudena Cemetery
Pantheon of Illustrious Men

We are going to focus on a part of the Sacramental of San Justo. This is one of the cemeteries that emerged in Madrid due to the prohibition of burials inside churches during the first half of the 1846th century. It was built in XNUMX on the Cerro de las Ánimas, with a project by the architect Wenceslao Graviña. It is located between the Ermita del Santo walk and Vía Carpetana, in Carabanchel. The entrance is at number 70 Paseo de la Ermita del Santo.

This Sacramental houses the remains of great personalities, and important works of architecture and sculpture. In 1887, coinciding with a cholera epidemic, a license was requested from the Madrid City Council to build a new and enormous enclosure: the patio of Santa Gertrudis, our protagonist today.

The patio of Santa Gertrudis is the largest in the sacramental. In its 3rd section some of the best pantheons are located
modernists of Madrid, highlighting those of José de la Cámara, the work of Benito González del Valle Fernández-Galán, Vicenta Palavicino of Avial, made by Plácido Francés Mexía, and Gregorio Cano de Mena, designed by Jeronym Pedro Mathet Rodríguez.
More modernist architecture, with neo-romantic reminiscences, in the pantheon of the Esteban de la Peña family, designed by José Fermín de Astiz Bárcena.

There is an ornamental temple that presides over the enclosure, the work of Agustín Querol, in which we can read the inscription “BEATUS HOMO QUI INVENIT SAPIENTIAM” (Holy is the man who finds wisdom.) The bas-relief busts of Espronceda and Larra are by Aniceto Marinas and Miguel Ángel Trilles, respectively. Without being a cemetery as visited as some Parisians, it has become a place of pilgrimage for lovers of Art and Literature, with the most frequent visit being to Larra's tomb.

Here, in Santa Gertrudis, is the pantheon sponsored by the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists, built in 1902, where the remains of lara, espronceda, villaespesa, Núñez de Arce, Rosales, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, marquina, Hartzenbusch y White of the Rivers.

There are other very interesting patios such as San Millán or San Miguel, but we will have to leave them for another visit.

A abrazo.