Last month, I returned to Italy to continue my cemetery project. After capturing a few newer sites, I found myself once more at Modena’s San Cataldo Cemetery.

Designed by Aldo Rossi in the 1970s, this cemetery remains famously incomplete, earning it the local moniker, "Modena’s Sagrada Familia." Yet, like its Barcelona counterpart, its unfinished state only enriches its melancholic aura. Time feels suspended here, and walking through its quiet colonnades compels reflection on life and death.

Unlike the ornate sculptures of the older adjacent cemetery, San Cataldo’s uniform niches emphasise equality in death—a modern, pared-down vision, eschewed by locals who consider it too stark. This is my fourth visit, and while the site now feels familiar, its unfilled niches, bathed in shifting sunlight, are hauntingly vacant, a quiet dance of light and shadow.

This time, without the usual closing-hour announcements, I stayed undisturbed until dusk. I ventured into an unused section, passing vacant vaults open to the soft Modena sunlight. Through a window, I glimpsed the red-bricked ossuary chapel, whose upper tiers have filled over the years. Locals often dismiss Rossi’s vision, but beneath his “Blue of the Sky” design lies a sombre beauty, a place where not only human memories but those of the surrounding fields are preserved.