How much does it cost to die? Quite a lot of money, in San Michele, and that's not an understatement.

If it were only this, however, it would simply be an economic problem. Sometimes, however, it is much more. Because in reality, for some families it can cost so much (a burial niche in concession for 30 years) that they have to give up traditional burial and converge, even in the absence of an express will of the deceased, on cremation.

The fault lies with the (well-known) lack of "series burial niches": the Municipality, while waiting to make available the new (about 200) burial niches it has built, is recovering the remaining ones (with exhumations) but at the moment "the offer" is limited above all to the "long burial niches", which cost up to 2800 euros (almost double that of a normal one), and to the others in the fifth and sixth row, which are inaccessible (or in any case dangerous) for elderly people.

"For a few weeks now, the niches for sale have been displayed with an eyedropper, forcing families who choose burial to find themselves faced with very few niches in low rows, sometimes long or even in the sixth row," explains Mariano Ligas, of the Don Bosco funeral agency.