Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Councilor Cocco: "A plan in the wake of the evolution of the city, for a greater valorization of the artistic heritage and a rethinking of the spaces in relation to the changed burial needs"

Milan, 9 December 2019 – With 28 votes in favor and 6 abstentions, the City Council approved the resolution to update the Master Plan of the Milanese Cemeteries.

The Cemetery Master Plan is the instrument through which the Municipality of Milan establishes the planning of its cemetery system in relation to burial needs, regulates the choices of the Administration and organizes the cemetery functions.

The proposal to update the Plan, already developed during the previous council, has been updated with the scientific, cultural and methodological support of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Polytechnic of Milan (Dastu/Polimi).

The Plan concerns the eight city cemeteries (Maggiore, Monumentale, Bruzzano, Lambrate, Chiaravalle, Greco, Baggio and Muggiano) which together cover an area of ​​approximately 148 hectares (of which 21 hectares of green spaces), within which approximately 886.000 burials are found.

The update of the Master Plan was developed based on the evaluation of the burial demand which, over the years, is increasingly oriented towards the burial of ashes following cremation, with a consequent decrease in the burial fields envisaged by the current Plan, approved in 2000.

The new Plan approved today focuses on some design strategies to effectively respond to the needs of citizens and the city, allocating the areas based on the change in trends that have occurred in the last 10 years and in anticipation of the future, which see a 53% increase in cremations, 43% of burials of ashes, 103% of dispersion of ashes, 18% of burials, while inhumations dropped by 25%. 20% of requests for family graves cannot be granted.

The main objectives are: to innovate the technical solutions for burial and the use of spaces (for example through the planting of trees where the ashes were scattered, underground cells - i.e. buried artefacts - for the burial of the remains and ashes) and the methods planning through the use of open forms of competitions, including at an international level, for some areas); enhance cemetery spaces through artistic-cultural and tourist attractive initiatives with the aim of promoting knowledge of the artistic, historical and monumental heritage of city cemeteries; enhance and enhance the contribution to urban biodiversity of cemeteries through a reforestation project aimed at mitigating the concentration and deposition of atmospheric pollutants to increase the benefits on air quality.

“With the new master plan approved today by the City Council - commented the councilor for Civic Services Roberta Cocco - we are adapting our cemetery system to the changes in society and the city. The Plan required a long process, but we are very satisfied with the result, which manages to combine valorisation of the artistic and cultural heritage of our cemeteries, optimization and innovation of spaces and attention to the creation and care of new green areas".

In particular, the new master plan intends to redefine the destination of part of the cemetery areas, providing for their transformation from burial fields to spaces for the burial of remains and ashes, spaces for the construction of 99-year family tombs, new burial fields of bodies not completely mineralized and rationalization of the existing ones, expansion of the fields for the burial of deceased people professing religions other than Catholic and for the burials of deceased belonging to religious brotherhoods; integration of cemetery services through the creation of common ossuaries in cemeteries that are still lacking; integration of the areas for the scattering of ashes, in addition to the already existing "Garden of Remembrance" of the Lambrate Cemetery, with the creation of further "Gardens of Remembrance" in the cemeteries of Bruzzano and Greco, with the expansion of the "Boschetto del Remembrance" of the Maggiore cemetery and with the creation of the “Radici” project (area for the dispersion of ashes through the burial of cinerary urns, in biodegradable material, within green areas to be used for tree planting) in the Maggiore and Baggio cemeteries; construction of a new building for columbaria and ossuary/cinerary cells at the Maggiore cemetery, in a symmetrical position with respect to the Piramide building. With a view to valorising interventions in cemeteries, encouraging the emergence of different design solutions and improving the quality offer, the project of the new building may be selected on the basis of an international design competition; destination of some spaces of the Monumental cemetery as a site for historical-archival research, with exhibition rooms, alongside the restoration laboratories already present, in order to promote the Monumental as a place of research and cultural dissemination for the entire city. Enhancement of the spaces of the Monumental Crematorium Temple, now abandoned, to be dedicated as an exhibition hall with museum value.