On 6 May 1952, Maria Montessori died unexpectedly and peacefully in Noordwijk, a small town on the Dutch coast. A citizen of the world, she had asked to be buried wherever she died — which is why you will find her grave in Noordwijk. Many Montessorians when “doing the Dutch Montessori Trail” plan a visit to her grave and are touched by the inscription of her grave and the beautiful, symbolic semi-circular construction. What many people may not know is that this was designed by her oldest grandson Mario Junior. Here is a snippet of a memory of Maria Montessori he shared in 1992, published in AMI’s Communications (1992/4).

Grandmother knew how to explain this complicated process and the importance of the child's role in the formation of the human personality, so clearly, penetratingly and -one could say- passionately, that any interested listener could always pick something from her lectures that would stick in his mind and heart. One felt always the need to elaborate it further in one's own mind and to go back for more. It was not a philosophy, as many people tend to call it, nor a science as such. One can observe the things she explained about the child and the adult that will eventually result from its further develop­ment. That can be studied scientifically. She has given the tools to do so.

Grandmother has shown us the way. The text on her grave has not been chosen at random. "lo prego i cari bambini che possono tutto di unirsi a me per la construzione della pace negli uomini e nel mondo. (I beg the dear all-powerful children to unite with me for the building of peace in Man and in the world.)