The City: Tomb with a View

Rozzano in northern Italy boasts only 9,000 souls, but work started last week on twin, 20-story skyscrapers that will eventually add 14,000 dead citizens to the town's population.

The cemetowers were designed by pretty, blonde Milanese Architect Nanda Vigo, 28, who was commissioned by Rozzano's city fathers to design a conventional cemetery. Attracted by her plan for saving scarce land and even scarcer money, the city sounded out the Vatican, received an immediate nihil obstat. Rozzano's citizenry, though normally wary of innovation, also showed surprising enthusiasm for the idea.

"Dying is expensive in Italy," explains Architect Vigo. "In Milan a burial plot costs over $3,000 and is guaranteed only for ten years. In the towers we can give a family a vault for about $150, and it will remain theirs as long as the building remains."

In front of the windowless concrete towers, which will be only four stories to begin with, she has designed a one-story, 250-ft.-long building to serve as reception room, chapel, viewing room and custodian quarters. In the cemetowers, each floor will be divided into four sections containing three tiers of vaults which will be so well insulated that "they will preserve the body far better than if it were buried."

The towers are designed so they can be added to as needed. For the status-minded who are willing to stake $150 that they will live that long, vault reservations in the yet-to-be-built tower penthouses are already available at no extra cost. Says Architect Vigo: "All my friends are already asking for reservations in the towers. And the nice thing about this kind of job is that I already know where I'll end up."