A perfectly Anglican way to spend All Souls' morning in Rome.

On this day in which we remember the souls of the faithful departed, my church community of All Saints' Anglican Church Rome gathered in the chapel of the English Cemetery of Rome, near Piramide to have a Mass.

The cemetery was founded in the early XVIII century when the British aristocracy used to come to Rome for their grand tour, it eventually got bigger when also American families of the gilded age and the British used to come to Rome to spend their final years or to marry Italians, hence they needed also a place for their final rest.

Hence the cemetery was created in 1738 with the burial of a young Oxford student. Several notable people are buried in the cemetery, such as the poets Keats and Shelley, or Story, famous for his tomb with the beautiful sculpture Angel of grief.

During Mass we remembered the members of our community, both recent and not, in fact we also remembered John Keats who was a fellow parishioner of All Saints' back in his days! Living near the church, in what was then known the English Ghetto, which is to say the area surrounding the Spanish Steps and the Piazza del Popolo.

The chapel in which the service was held is somewhat reminiscent of the German Nazarene movement (analogue to the English Pre-Raphaelite one), and was built in 1898.