Six Fascinating Cemeteries to Visit While Alive
One of the weird things that I’ve discovered about myself over the years is that I love visiting cemeteries. The older and gnarlier the cemetery, the more I want to visit. They are one of the places that our connection to the past can feel the most tangible. I don’t think of myself as particularly morbid or obsessed with death, but in a cemetery I see the appeal. That connection can be felt in any graveyard in any small town, but some places are truly special. Here are six cemeteries that are worth visiting while you’re still in the land of the living.
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise
This cemetery in Eastern Paris has a serious claim to being the most famous graveyard in the world, and hundreds of thousands visit annually. Somehow this doesn’t detract from its atmosphere or its significance. Row upon row of tightly packed above-ground crypts and mausoleums pack these 110 acres. It is estimated that approximately a million people have been buried here since the cemetery opened in 1804. That number includes at least one American icon: the rock star Jim Morrison, who died in a Paris hotel. American tourists searching for his small headstone, however, will find the graves of many, many other historical luminaries.
Dozens buried here can be identified only by their last name. Here are just a few: Moliere, Wilde, Proust, Piaf, Chopin, Bizet, Delacroix, Pissarro, de Balzac, and Bernhardt. When I visited, it was raining on their elaborate tombs. Delacroix’s, for example, depicts his most famous painting, “The Raft of the Medusa”, in pink marble. Père-Lachaise is a little off the Paris tourist trail but definitely worth a visit.
Arlington National Cemetery
The youngest cemetery on this list was started out of spite. When Montgomery Meigs, a Union General during the Civil War, had to find somewhere to bury the mounting number of battle casualties, he chose the front yard of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The house is on a hill directly on the other side of the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Meigs and Lee had gone to West Point together, and Meigs felt that by siding with the Confederacy his classmate had betrayed their alma mater (not to mention their country). Therefore, Meigs wanted to make sure Lee couldn’t live in his house ever again. Little did he know that he was creating one of America’s most sacred national shrines.
Today, Arlington National Cemetery covers over 600 acres,. military funerals continue to be held seven days a week. To be buried here you have to have been a member of the U.S. military, as well as meet various other criteria. Visitor’s can still tour Lee’s Mansion, but it is no longer the prime attraction. A large amphitheater hosts Memorial Day ceremonies. The Tomb of the Unknowns holds the remains of unidentified soldiers killed in each American war. It is guarded rain or shine and the elaborate Changing of the Guard ceremony is a major tourist attraction. The grave of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy is marked by an eternal flame.
The most memorable image of Arlington is likely the row upon row upon row of identical white tombstones, marking those that have died in defense of America. It is also a special place for me personally, as the ashes of my grandfather, a naval officer in World War II, are interred here.
Highgate Cemetery
Many luminaries are buried in this most famous of London cemeteries. In particular the grave of Karl Marx, considered the “Father of Communism”, continues to be a pilgrimage site. I think the biggest reason to visit, though, is the setting. Unlike most graveyards it is essentially in the middle of a forest. Trees and plants overgrow elaborate Victorian graves. In fact, it has actually been designated as a nature reserve. It’s no wonder that this is the place that gave rise to the legend of the “Highgate Vampire”. A series of grave desecrations led to actual “mass vampire hunts” in the 1970s. There are even ongoing feuds between rival “paranormal researchers” that last to this day.
But even if all of that doesn’t appeal to you, Highgate has a unique atmosphere that makes it worth a visit. As the cemetery’s own website says, Highgate “has some of the finest funerary architecture in the country… amidst a romantic profusion of trees.”
King’s Chapel Burying Ground
Today Central Boston is dominated by a profusion of glass skyscrapers. Hidden among them are a handful of small graveyards that predate the United States by several decades, including the King’s Chapel Burying Ground. This small cemetery dates to 1630. Those buried here include John Winthrop, the first Puritan Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Many of the tombstones feature a skeleton with wings. Apparently this is supposed to represent the soul leaving the deceased and traveling to heaven. A lot of America feels like it appeared out of the ether sometime around 1965, but here you can set foot on ground that hasn’t changed much for several centuries. We had the chance to visit this one on our most recent visit to Boston, you can check out the video here.
Manila North Cemetery
Most cemeteries are known for the people who are buried there, but the oldest cemetery in the capital of the Philippines is known for the people who live there, too. There are 12 million people in Manila, and according to the New York Times as many as a quarter of them are “informal settlers”. Basically these are poor people who do not maintain formal homes. Those in the cemetery have made homes out of the elaborate mausoleums of the Filipino rich and famous. Many earn money from keeping up the tombs or carving headstones.
Residents piped in electricity at some point and many have their own TVs, but not running water. Amid what is essentially a busy neighborhood, the business of the cemetery still goes on, with as many as 80 funerals per day.
Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague
The Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague is at least a century older than any of the other cemeteries on this list. It has thousands of gravestones crammed into a small space, with the oldest readable stone dating from 1430. Today the stones lie at all angles, with many leaning on each other. The cemetery’s cramped space comes from a combination of factors: the Jewish community had such respect for its ancestors that it could not remove old stones, but at the same time they were only rarely permitted by the Christian authorities to purchase additional land to expand the cemetery. Instead they just laid on more dirt and buried a new layer of graves above the previous, like an apartment building of the dead.
The final grave here is from 1787, when the Emperor banned burials inside the city walls for reasons of hygiene. At one time there were many of these old cemeteries throughout Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the Nazis destroyed most of these. Hitler, believing the cemetery in Prague to be the finest example of its kind, requested it be preserved as a museum for posterity. These days the cemetery is run by the Jewish Museum of Prague, probably not quite the museum Hitler had in mind.
These six only scratch the surface of the incredible number of beautiful and fascinating cemeteries around the world. If you’ve visited one that you think should be on this list, let us know in the comments!
