The cemetery is surrounded by a road network and was created between 1865 and 1870 by the architect and town planner Giuseppe Poggi when, after the demolition of the medieval walls, he created this system of boulevards modelled on those in Paris.

The roads gave a smoother flow to traffic and offered the opportunity to build new, lavish residences for the industrial and business classes with the advent of a United Italy.
Amidst the atmospheric arrangement of cypress trees on the cemetery itself, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the famous English poet, is buried.
The unusual location of the cemetery in an urban setting was the inspiration of the well-known painting, L'Isola dei Morti –the Island of the Dead- by the Swiss-German painter Arnold Bocklin.
Leave Piazzale Donatello and take Via Matteotti in order to reach Piazza della Libertà.
This whole area is closed in by arcades and in the center is the 14th century Porta San Gallo and the triumphal arch erected to commemorate the entrance into the city in 1739 by the first Duke of Lorraine, Franz Stefan, and his Habsburg wife, the Archduchess of Austria, the famous Maria Teresa, destined to become the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire.