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Case file s76 · Music and sport · 1840
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1840
Portrait of Niccolò Paganini
Portrait of Niccolò Paganini. Luigi Calamatta. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
27 May 1840
Place
Nice, Kingdom of Sardinia · Italy
Field
classical violin, composition · Religion on the timeline
Legal tradition
Sardinian civil law; Catholic canon law on burial · Civil law · Royal and church law
Historical event
Romantic era; the cult of the virtuoso
Music and sportBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireEuropeItaly

The Church refused Paganini burial, and his embalmed body was moved from cellar to cellar for 36 years

Niccolò Paganini was the most famous violinist in Europe and was rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil. He died in Nice in 1840 without receiving the last rites. Accounts differ on whether he refused them or had lost his voice to illness and could not speak. The Bishop of Nice refused him burial in consecrated ground. His son Achille, his heir, began petitioning the Church. The embalmed body was kept in a cellar in Nice. Some accounts add a leper hospital and an olive-oil factory as later stops†. In 1844 it was moved to Genoa but still not buried. It took an appeal to the Pope and decades of petitions by Achille before burial was allowed. Paganini was buried in Parma in 1876, 36 years after his death. The coffin was opened again in 1883 or 1893 (sources differ), the second time so that violinist František Ondříček and Paganini's grandson could view the body. He was reinterred in Parma's new Villetta cemetery in 1896, where he lies in 2026.

What the law took from it

An heir with money still needs a cooperating authority to bury the dead, and religious law can hold a body hostage longer than any court.

Sources
  1. hekint.orgPress
  2. interlude.hkPress
  3. premiopaganini.itPress
  4. worldcitytrail.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “The Church refused Paganini burial, and his embalmed body was moved from cellar to cellar for 36 years,” story s76, https://www.celebrity.estate/the-church-refused-paganini-burial-and-1840, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Music and sportBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireEuropeCivil lawRoyal and church lawItaly