The city’s largest cemetery dates from the Napoleonic occupation of Rome (1804–14), when an edict ordered that the city’s dead must be buried outside the city walls. Between the 1830s and the 1980s virtually all Catholics who died in Rome (with the exception of popes, cardinals and royalty) were buried here. On All Souls’ Day (2 November), thousands of Romans flock here to leave flowers on the tombs of loved ones.
