Formal decisions taken in the 1880s and 1890s confirmed that the graves of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley in Rome were considered to be sacrosanct. In the twentieth century, they continued to be depicted in art and literature, increasingly through photography and in fiction writing. Requests to be buried near the poets changed the environment of Shelley’s grave while Keats’s grave was at risk when the Cemetery was bombed during WW2, leading to criticism in the press of its condition. Regular commemoration ceremonies remind us of the continuing sanctity of the poets graves today.