He’s generally hailed as one of the finest Italian artists of all time. So where do you think Caravaggio is buried? In a great cathedral, like so many of his peers? Or the Pantheon, like Raphael?

Oddly enough, we simply don’t know. Caravaggio died penniless trying to make his way back to Rome where he was about to be pardoned (or at least excused) for the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni, an act which forms a pivotal part of the next Nic Costa book, The Garden of Evil. We do know where he died, though. In this pretty, now affluent seaside town, Porto Ercole, which lies on the beautiful Monte Argentario promentory an hour and a half north of Rome by car, just in Tuscany.

I was there last week and tried in vain to find much about Caravaggio’s final days. All of the local literature says the same thing. No one knows for sure what happened, except that he was very ill, taken into some kind of a charity hospital, and perished there on July 18, 1610, at the probable age of thirty nine. There’s no grave, and not much to mark his passing, except for a long street named after him, a monument and this restaurant below.

A curious end? I suppose so, though if you follow the man’s life you get the impression he was never one who expected to be lauded by the great when he was gone. Porto Ercole back then was a wild, unmanageable region, part of the notorious Maremma. Today it’s a place where the Roman rich and film stars keep weekend cottages. Very beautiful, very posh and very comfy. Not somewhere Caravaggio would have lingered for a moment.