Some communities hold competitions for the most beautiful grave plot. Families spend the day using trowels to sculpt the dirt mound and later adorn it with flowers in unusual patterns and designs.
The Pantheon General and many of the other older city cemeteries no longer have space for new graves. Families can usually overcome this constraint by burying their dead in plots already occupied by other relatives. Officially, cemeteries allow this practice only if at least seven years have passed since the burial of the previous difunto. In such circumstances, the grave is reopened; the bones of the last difunto, once exhumed, are disposed of or placed in a new casket; and the grave is covered once more.*
*Days of Death, Days of Life by Kristin Norget, Columbia University Press, 2006
