Certosa di Bologna: View of part of the cemetery within cloister courtyards

The Certosa di Bologna is a former Carthusian monastery (or charterhouse) in Bologna, which was founded in 1334 and suppressed in 1797. In 1801 it became the city's Monumental Cemetery. The passion of the local nobility and aristocracy for monumental family tombs transformed the Certosa into an 'open air museum,' a stage of the Italian grand tour: it was visited by Byron, Dickens, Theodor Mommsen, and Stendhal. In 1869 an Etruscan necropolis, which had been in use from the sixth to the third centuries BCE, was discovered here. The Certosa is located just outside the walls of the city, at the foot of the Monte della Guardia and the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca.