A tiny paradise slips away

Rome's tiny Non-Catholic Cemetery possibly contains the highest density of famous and important bones anywhere in the world, the cramped final resting place of the poets Shelley and Keats, dozens of diplomats, the Bulgari family, Goethe's only son, and Antonio Gramsci, a founding father of European Communism, to name a few.

The site, also widely known as the Protestant Cemetery, although it contains the graves of Jews and other non-Christians, is also the oldest burial ground in continuous use in Europe, conservationists say.

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But today, this precious bit of paradise is decaying and in financial crisis, recently added to the World Monument Fund's 2006 Watch List of the 100 most endangered sites on earth. Many of its important monuments are crumbling like the bones they mark, damaged by pollution and years without archeological maintenance. The landscape is overgrown, waterlogged by poor drainage.