“To Alessandro Volta, his widow and children,” reads an inscription at the entrance to the scientist’s tomb/mausoleum in Camnago Volta. In 1831, his heirs decided to transfer his remains here, because it was the place he had loved most in life, describing it in his letters as “a countryside only an hour’s walk from Como, but secluded.” The funerary monument, designed by Melchiorre Nosetti, resembles a small neoclassical pantheon. On either side of the entrance door, two sandstone statues by Luigi Argenti represent Religion and Science, the two “pillars” of Volta’s existence. Inside, on the back wall, there is a marble sarcophagus and above it a bust of the inventor of the battery, created by the sculptor Giovanni Battista Comolli. Next to the latter are two other winged allegorical figures, one of which is in the act of crowning the great physicist. In 1875, Volta’s body was exhumed to comply with the request of Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), physician, anthropologist, jurist, and father of modern criminology, who wished to study the genius’s skull as part of his controversial research on the relationship between physical characteristics and individual qualities. At the entrance to the Camnago cemetery, two methane lamps light the path leading to Volta’s tomb. They were installed in 1999—the bicentennial of the battery—to commemorate another discovery by the illustrious Como native that changed our daily lives: the gas we use for cooking and heating.
