Gesù Risorto is a 21st century cemetery church at Cimitero Laurentino. The entrance to this cemetery is at Via Laurentina Km 13.5, in the Castel di Decima district.
The dedication is to Jesus Christ, resurrected.
Status[]
This church is being described as a chapel, but it actually now has the status of a church with its own priest, Mons. Claudio Palma.
It was a chapel when opened in 2012, but was raised to the dignity of a church in the following year, 2013.
It is dependent on the parish church of San Marco in Agro Laurentino.
History[]
The Cimitero Laurentino was laid out on a green-field site slightly beyond the built-up area, east of the outlying suburb of Trigòria, in 2002. It is the third-largest cemetery in Rome.
The church was begun in 2010, and completed two years later. The architect was Giovanni Testa.
The project was funded by AMA, a private environmental services company which is running the city's cemeteries.
Exterior[]
The church is located up the main driveway of the cemetery, just before the graves begin. It is a circular structure in concrete, with a flat roof clad in fine limestone slates. The exterior walls are rendered in pure white, and are unadorned. They are slightly higher than the roof, forming a low parapet with a slight lip to the outer edge.
The entrance has a porch or narthex formed in the plan by bringing forward an arc of the circumference of the circle. The curved frontage that results is slightly lower than the external walls on either side, and has a pair of windows in the gaps behind its ends. The portal is a simple rectangular orifice.
The roof of the entrance, slightly lower than most of the main roof, joins seamlessly on to the latter at one end of a lower zone of roofing, which runs in a converging wedge shape back to behind the altar.
One feature of the design consists of tangential screen walls in honey-coloured limestone. Two of these are tangential to the church's circumference at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock as viewed from the entrance. The near end of the left hand one has a detached portion slightly higher, forming a pier, and in the gap is hung the church bell. This amounts to the campanile. Just to the left of the far end of this wall is another one, free-standing, running further back beyond the church.
This left hand wall bears a cross, and the epigraph Vita mutatur non tollitur ('life is changed, not taken").
The corresponding screen wall on the right hand side is the left hand wall of a sacristy on a wedge-shaped plan. There are two of these sacristies, side by side and bounded by two further walls of the same type.
In front of the church is a large area of limestone paving, 1200 square metres, providing space for open-air liturgies especially when crowds are expected. This would regularly occur on 2 November, All Souls' Day.
Interior[]
The interior is not very large, about 220 square metres with seating for 140. It is all in white, with the central wedge-shaped roof zone present as a lower central area of the ceiling containing circular light embrasures. The side edges of this zone have two steps, which are continued down the wall behind the altar. There is a simple small tabernacle on the wall here. The altar itself stands on a raised lenticular-shaped floor area.
To the left of the altar is a large crucifix, and to the right a modern icon of Our Lady in a vaguely Byzantine style.
The floor is polished limestone, the same material as in the screen walls outside.
Access[]
Three of the city's dedicated cemetery bus services run to here: C8, C11 and C13. These run on weekends and public holidays only.
Alternatively, take the 703 from the EUR Fermi metro station in the direction of Monte Migliore. You will have to walk up the drive from the roundabout (gyratory) on the road.
The cemetery is open October to March 7:30 to 18:00, with an hour extra in the evening in summer.