An of course moment.... no25....the tomb of Christopher Columbus; interesting design.

Christopher Columbus' enormous tomb in Seville Cathedral depicts, at almost twice life size, a catafalque being carried by four kings; the symbolic monarchs of Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarre. It's a stunning example of religious shock and awe, as well as being a magnificently-executed piece of art. But are the remains in the casket really those of Columbus? Probably but it's by no means certain, although this is generally held to be his last resting place.

A truly impressive monument. It could only be Spain when one thinks about it. Well done Priscilla!

With regard to No.16, then being almost completely wrong is actually worse than being completely wrong. One is then left wondering which elements are incorrect. Is it Romanov and not Habsburg or it is neither and is the occupant male rather than female? 

So I'll go for a man and a Russian who was married to a Romanov - Ivan the Terrible.

P.S. On the question of clues then I'll backtrack a little.   If a wild but erroneous guess is made then an additional clue might be appropriate in that instance.

Vizzer wrote:

On the question of clues then I'll backtrack a little.   If a wild but erroneous guess is made then an additional clue might be appropriate in that instance.

OK, it is not that unusual for remains to be interred missing certain body parts: for example the hearts of Chopin, Thomas Hardy and Robert the Bruce were buried separate from the rest of their remains, while Einstein's brain was removed for preservation before his body was cremated, and the least said about Napoleon's penis the better. Meanwhile the remains in the tomb shown in no. 16 were interred without the right arm. And he was neither a Romanov nor Habsburg.

Argh! Another 'of course' moment. It's our very own Lord Nelson. And there was me thinking it was in the mystical east. It was the coronet which threw me.

Bingo!

Priscilla wrote:

Thanks for the clue - so No 21 is Tolstoy - my knowledge of Russians to look up is - shall we say - somewhat thin.

Meles meles wrote:

No. 15 is not Tchaikovsky, but he is Russian (as indeed are two others still to be deduced) and he is buried in the same cemetery as Tchaikovsky.

If my counting is right, we've only had 2 Russians so far - Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. So 1 of No. 13 or No. 18 or No. 29 must also be Russian. The styles of Nos. 13 and 29 seem too Western so it could be No. 18. I had earlier thought that that might be Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. But now I'll guess at Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

No. 18 does have a prominent Russian Orthodox cross on top (and you might also be able to make out the Russian double-headed eagles on the corners) but it isn't Alexander Pushkin.

So we're still trying to work out:

No. 13


No. 18

Updated: it's Pyotr I Alekseyevich, aka Peter the Great of Russia, who died in 1725 and is entombed in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.

No. 29

That cross in No.18 being upside down to view, I simply didn't see it as orthodox. Yet now you've pointed it out, it really is Orthodox with a capital 'O' which means it certainly wasn't Liszt or any other Hungarian.

Your earlier mention of nordmann's musical clues made me think that it might be a composer such as Modest Mussorgsky with his Night on Bald Mountain being suitable for Hallowe'en. Mussorgsky, however, had quite fleshy features while the bust above the sarcophagus shows someone with quite fine features.

The view being upside down also makes it difficult to judge the scale. If it's the person I think it is then he stood at over 6'7" tall. A tall fellow with a big presence - Peter the Great?

Yes it's Pyotr I Alekseyevich, aka Peter the Great of Russia, entombed in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. I didn't realise he was so tall: to me he always seemed quite slight, but that might be in part because he died at a relatively young age (52) whist still physically very active, and so before he'd managed to chub out.

Lovely tomb for Peter the Great, I thought...... but are there coins placed on it? Is that a custom - and signifying what? Or something quite different. What people put on graves is interesting too.

In a remote rural  subcontinent villages I have seen  earthy mounds each decorated with broken cups and plates  - I presumed formerly used by interred, other places had stones or rag streamers on branches. More recent plots here in UK now have inlaid photos, plastic flowers - and surprising bits and bobs that must  reflect a significance. And coffins are now often painted or shaped and decorated. It seems almost throw back customs to more pagan times, to be honest...... fascinating.

The coins, medals, awards, medallions or whatever they are, placed on Peter the Great's tomb, intrigued me too. I'm certain they cannot be simply put there by modern enthusiastic well-wishers - that just isn't going to be allowed in any modern museum or gallery - although I haven't yet managed to discover what they are.

I've increased the size of no. 29 and can see a 'DE V........'  Could it be Voltaire?  The effigy doesn't look anything like the portraits I've seen of Voltaire however.

After a sort of on line hunt, I learned that the remains of several tsars and families were gathered and entombed in mostly identical white sarcophagi. In earlier years it was customary to make a display of medals and decorations about the embalmed body - so as you say. MM they do look like medallions and I guess you are right about them being just that - and placed there with some kind of Victorian age super glue - at a further guess. None of the other tombs seem to have anything similar tho interesting that the murdered tsar and family - including one Anastasia - were re buried there.......a kind of Russian full stop writ in stone to counter  the several Anastasias who appeared later as survivors. of that dreadful time, I do know of other survivors living in sheltered obscurity in Essex. One was a Count with severe mental conditions but whose loyal, protective man servant stayed with him - unpaid. .... there were others and perhaps I am the last person alive who knows of them (via my Grandmother who worked for many years where they lived) Perhaps I ought record this poignant tale some where.

I don't know whether the statue is a good likeness or not, LiR, nevertheless no.29 is Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet). When he died in 1778, because of his criticism of the Church, which he had refused to retract before his death, he was denied a Christian burial in Paris, although friends and relations managed to bury his body secretly at the Abbey of Scellières in Champagne. However in 1791 the National Assembly of France, regarding Voltaire as a forerunner of the French Revolution, had his remains brought back to Paris and enshrined in the Panthéon.

No. 13 is tricky. It's difficult to work out what the scene is on the side of the sarcophagus. The main character, however, appears to be male and has 2 cherubs at his feet. Above is a globe with what looks like a female character on it resting on some sort of musical instrument. A lyre? The main character is resting his right elbow on a pile of books. So I'd guess he's some sort of academic. I'll go for Isaac Newton.

It is indeed the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. Even without his name on the inscription below (which I had deliberately cropped out) it would have been obvious whose tomb it was if only the photo I'd shown was much larger and so had included all the intricate details. The front panel depicts figures using instruments related to Newton's mathematical and optical work. One has a telescope, one is looking through a prism and another is balancing the sun and planets on a steel yard. Others depict Newton's activities as Master of the Mint; figures carry pots of coins and an ingot is being put into a furnace. Above this the sculpture of Newton reclines against a pile of academic books labelled 'Divinity', 'Chronology', 'Opticks' and 'Philo. Prin. Math' (ie his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica of 1686). With his left hand he points to a scroll held by two standing cherubs on which is painted a mathematical diagram. The background is a pyramid on which is a celestial globe marked with the signs of the zodiac, the constellations and the path of the comet of 1680. On top of the globe sits the figure of Urania (the muse of Astronomy) leaning on a book.

And so with a suitable air of gravity    that concludes the quiz, although feel free to continue any discussions.

Thank you so much Meles for that fabulous and spooktacular quiz. Some of the clues were indeed tricky but the whole thing was definitely a treat - and a welcome one at that. 

As you say the quiz proper is concluded (co-incidentally with reference to the pyramid depicted on Newton's tomb) but there still remains the matter of the supplementary question to No. 28. 

Many years ago Mrs V and I stayed in a very comfy and clean pensione near the Piramide metro station in Rome. Despite being based there, however, we didn't ever get round to visiting either the eponymous pyramid or the Protestant Cemetery. There is, of course, so much to see in that city that we didn't even use that metro station but instead would catch a tram from outside the nearby Roma Ostiense railway station to go to whatever sightseeing destination we had in mind for that day. For that reason (and to my shame) I simply have no idea who is buried in the pyramid in Rome. Maybe you could put that final ghost to rest for us.

It's the pyramid of Gaius Cestius, who had served as an elected magistrate (Tribune of the Plebians) and been a member of one of the religious colleges in Rome, sometime during the reign of Augustus. Other than that very little else is known about him.

His tomb, the pyramid in question, was built about 18–12 BC, mostly of brick and concrete then faced on the outside with slabs of white marble. When constructed the tall gleaming monument would have stood in (mostly) open countryside outside the city walls - it being illegal for bodies to be cremated and interred within the city, and why most roads leading into Rome were lined by tombs, cemeteries and indeed continually-active cremation sites. Whilst there would have been numerous other tombs all around, Cestius's tomb must have stood out, partly because of its size but also because it was built directly on the side of the the road. And in Cestius's case that road was the Via Ostiense, the all-important road that connected Rome with its port at Ostia. In the Roman Memorial Grand Prix, Cestius - whether through ancestral rights, contacts in high places, or just money crossing palms - had clearly managed to secure himself a place which, if not in Pole Position, was at least in the very front rank.

However when the Aurelian Walls were constructed between 271 and 275, Cestius' pyramid was incorporated into the defences as the corner of a triangular bastion and it still forms part of a well-preserved stretch of the walls a short distance from the Porta San Paolo. The Non-Catholic Cemetery (Cimitero Acattolico), containing the graves of both Keats and Shelley, is just behind the wall amongst the trees in the following pic.

 

A dedicatory inscription is carved on both northwestern and southeastern faces. It reads:
G · CESTIVS · L · F · POB · EPVLO · PR · TR · PL
VII · VIR · EPVLONVM
Gaius Cestius, son of Lucius, of the Pobilia [voting tribe], member of the College of Epulones, praetor, tribune of the plebs, septemvir of the Epulones.

Below the inscription on the southeastern face is a second inscription recording the circumstances of the tomb's construction. This reads:
OPVS · APSOLVTVM · EX · TESTAMENTO · DIEBVS · CCCXXX
ARBITRATV
PONTI · P · F · CLA · MELAE · HEREDIS · ET · POTHI · L
The work was completed, in accordance with the will, in 330 days, by the decision of the heir, Pontus Mela, son of Publius of the Claudia, and Pothus, freedman.

... the inscription suggests to me that the stonemasons demanded - not unreasonably - to be paid by the letter, but that the inheritors of Gaius Cestius's wealth nevertheless begrudged every additional sestercius needed if the names, titles and other details were to be spelled out in full, and so they quibbled over every dot and abbreviation. Nothing really changes does it? I inevitably had much the same discussion over the wording on my father's headstone. As is often said: la plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, or perhaps, at least here, that should be in Latin; quid sit circuit est circa, ... which would be considerably cheaper if you were intending to have it engraved on your tomb as it uses far fewer letters.

I think the interior burial chamber can sometimes be visited: it's a simple barrel-vaulted rectangular cavity with little ornamentation. When opened in 1660 the chamber was found to be decorated with frescoes, but only scant traces of these survive and there are no original contents. The tomb had been sealed when it was built, with no exterior entrance, but had been plundered at some time thereafter, probably during antiquity.



Beyond what can be gleaned from the brief inscriptions on the exterior of his tomb, little is known about Gais Cestius himself. There were originally other memorials next to the pyramid, fragments of which have identified three more heirs of Cestius as being: Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus, a famous general; Publius Rutilius Lupus, an orator; and Lucius Junius Silanus, a member of the distinguished gens Junia (a celebrated family that could trace its origins back to the days of the Roman monarchy). Accordingly, as well as having been at one time an elected official and the member of a religious guild, Gaius Cestius was presumably wealthy (you didn't get to become a praetor unless you could afford to buy votes, nor leave sufficient spare cash for your heirs to be able to build you a very fine tomb) and generally be so well-connected within Roman society. However other than his tomb, he remains almost entirely unrecorded in history.