The medieval nun who guards the English cemetery in Florence

Anglican and then Catholic, married with children and grandchildren, the adult vocation. A life among books and the graves of romantic and literary heroes

I meet the unrepeatable Julia Bolton Holloway on an October morning. It happens by accident, thanks to a charger. I’m in Florence and I decide to take half a morning to visit the English cemetery. The cemetery is an elliptical dune of earth, where between 1828 and 1877 1,409 people were buried, coming from 16 different nations and mostly English. Created to bury non-Catholics, it is located in the middle of Piazzale Donatello, between two avenues. A company of romantic and literate heroes rest cradled by the buzz of cars. It is said that the English cemetery was the inspiration for the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin for “The Isle of the Dead”, a famous series of five paintings, made between 1880 and 1886, one of which was purchased by Adolf Hitler. A photo from 1940 portrays Hitler, Von Ribbentrop and Vjačeslav Molotov, the three strategists of the cowardly pact for the partition of Poland, while they are arguing grimly right in front of Böcklin’s painting.