Monumental cemetery of Staglieno

This is the statue of Caterina Campodonico, also known in Genoa as “la venditrice di noccioline” – the peanut seller of the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno.

She lived from 1804–1881/1882 in the vicinity of Genoa and was a poor street vendor who sold nuts, hazelnut/nut necklaces, and ciambelle (a type of bread ring/donut) at markets and religious festivals.

With the proceeds from a lifetime of selling nuts, she saved obsessively to be able to afford her own tomb in Staglieno – amidst the wealthy bourgeoisie.

It concerns a life-size marble statue, created by the sculptor Lorenzo Orengo (1881).

You see her in her everyday clothes, with necklaces of nuts/hazelnuts and ciambelle around her neck or in her hands: exactly as she sold on the street.

The monument stands in the lower western portico of Staglieno, between the monuments of wealthy families.

The epitaph is in the Genoese dialect, written by the poet Giambattista Vigo, and emphasizes that she earned her place among the notables through her own hard work.

She is a symbol of the simple, hardworking Genoese: an illiterate, poor woman who nevertheless secured her own “monumental” memory.

In many descriptions of Staglieno, her grave is explicitly mentioned as one of the best-known and most beloved monuments of the cemetery.

Pascal Brackman