"The creation of the enormous sanctuary of statuary in Genoa was part of the same movement to discontinue burials in churchyards and crypts that was responsible for the great park cemeteries of Paris and London. In 1804 Napoleon, then in charge of northern Italy, passed the Edict of Saint-Cloud. On the heels of the 1835 Cholera epidemic, as churches began to move stacked bodies out of overburdened catacombs, and new burials took up the remaining urban space, plans were finally made for a monumental cemetery in the outskirts of town. Designed by the famous Genovese architect Carlo Barabino in a Neo-Classical style, the Stagieno Cemetery opened in 1851. A compromise between the formality of the traditional orderly camposanto layout and the newly fashionable wilderness style of bocshetto irregulare, seen in Pere Lachaise, the grounds included cloisters, garden paths, and a reproduction of the famous Parthenon in Rome. The new cemetery quickly became the fashionable option, and increasingly became a showcase for world class sculpture." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet