The Guardian reports that Rome’s legendary Protestant Cemetery, which houses the graves of Keats and Shelley, is crumbling. Thanks to a lack of funding and maintenance, tree branches fell to the ground last Friday and cracked open a grave, barely missing Shelley’s tomb. Overgrown weeds and effects of pollution have also compromised some of the other stately gravestones of the non-Catholics buried in the shadow of the Aventine Hill.
The cemetery’s official website says that the family most affected has been informed of the damage, and that the 200-year-old site of many authors’ pilgrimages will be closed until further notice for repairs.
Although the secluded, beauteous area was added last year to a list of the World Monetary Fund’s 100 most endangered historical sites, monetary help has yet to arrive. In the meantime, the cemetery has no relief for the 1 million euros’ worth of debt it somehow racked up between 1999 and 2005. A sign on its gate reads, “Visitors are kindly requested to offer a contribution of at least two euros. We badly need it.”
In other news, J.K. Rowling has given the go-ahead to Warner Brothers Entertainment to open an entire Harry Potter theme park at the Universal Orlando Resort, since the book-based movies have earned the studio $3.5 billion U.S. so far.
