The Cemetery it was built, as a Protestant, outside the city walls, on a hill near the Porta a Pinti (now destroyed), at the expense of the Swiss Evangelical Church. Giuseppe Poggi gave it its current oval shape when, in 1865, demolished the walls and created the ring-road for Florence Capital, creating the oval Donatello Square, with the cemetery island wing center. The Cemetery became an elevated area in the center of the new square, much to acquire the nickname "Island of the Dead" and inspire the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (which here had buried a young daughter) in the famous work "The Island of the Dead", masterpiece of European Symbolism of the late nineteenth century. Burials they saturated the space, coming to 1.409 tombs of writers, artists, merchants and other personalities related to sixteen different countries, with a prevalence of British (hence the name). Even the Swiss Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, founder of Vieusseux Study is buried here. The presence of monumental tombs, statues, the layout of the paths that climb the mound and the presence of a variety of trees, give the place great charm romantic, so that Emily Dickinson, hit by the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wrote "The soul selects her own society".

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Monday-Friday 2:00/5:00 pm (winter), 3:00/6:00 pm (summer). Monday morning also 9:00/12: 00.