mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Would you consider traveling thousands of miles to visit a cemetery? Lots of people do, especially if the cemetery is full of famous people, or haunted, or even humorous. C’mon, you’re going to end up there anyway, so you might as well see them while you can still enjoy them!
Père-Lachaise, Paris
Burial at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris is the ultimate status symbol, with a price tag to match. You can visit the graves of American dancer Isadora Duncan, singer Jim Morrison, and playwright Molière. Wikipedia has a long list of famous people buried there. The most visited grave there today is that of writer Oscar Wilde, whose monument stone is constantly decorated with long-stemmed roses and lipstick kisses. The cemetery receives over two million visitors every year!
St Louis Cemeteries, New Orleans
A friend of mine arranged her honeymoon around a tour of “haunted” cemeteries in New Orleans, Louisiana! In most cemeteries, concrete tombs are decorative and the remains of the deceased are buried underneath. Since much of New Orleans lies below sea level, above-ground tombs actually contain the remains, often of many people. St. Louis Cemetery #1 is promoted as the burial site of “voodoo queen” Marie Laveau, who is said to walk about when the spirit moves her. So to speak. St. Louis #2, in the French Quarter, is the final resting place of jazz musicians, pirates, and war heroes.
The Merry Cemetery, Sapanta, Romania
The oxymoronicly-named Merry Cemetery of Sampata is world-renowned for the ornately-carved wooden crosses that bear painted art and poetry chronicling the life, and sometimes the death, of the deceased. The grave of a three-year-old girl has a painting of the car that hit her, and a poem that translates as:
Burn in Hell you damned Taxi
That came from Sibiu
As large as Romania is
You couldn’t find any other place to stop
Only in front of my house
To kill me?
In a village this small, there are no secrets, even after death. One cross tells what everyone already knew about this fellow:
One more thing I loved very much,
To sit at a table in a bar
Next to someone else’s wife.
Self-taught woodworker and poet Ioan Patras Stan carved brightly-colored memorials for over 50 years. You can see closeups of the Merry Cemetery crosses in this photo gallery.
Comments (16)
Comment
Don’t forget “findagrave”.com. You can find where your favorite dead famous people are buried.
Also, my mom and I went on tours of local cemeteries where reenactors dressed up as if they were the people buried in the grave and then told us about themselves. That was different.
posted by Michelle on 2-8-2007 at 7:21 am
Oh, yes, I would travel. I’ve been to the New Orleans cemetery, an incredible one in Nice, France, the Forest Lawn in L.A., etc. I love cemeteries.
posted by Rhea on 2-8-2007 at 9:05 am
I visited the Merry Cemetery a couple of years ago- my favorite markers included one depicting a young man rollerskating on train tracks. Apparently some of the markers depict the deceased participating in their favorite activities, and some show the manner of their death- this one may have been both. Unfortunately, I didn’t read enough Romanian to get the story.
posted by Stephanie on 2-8-2007 at 10:29 am
Not sure I traveled there just for this, but the Cemetery Buenos Aires is pretty cool and well visited. Eva Peron is buried there, though her husband is not.
posted by Jessica on 2-8-2007 at 11:22 am
One of my dear friends is a photographer who has a project to capture graveyard sites in black and white. While it wasn’t my thing, I appreciated her interest in it.
When she came to visit me in Mississippi years ago, we visited Natchez so she could tour a couple of historical cemetaries. I would conceed this at least was quite fascinating to me as a history buff.
I think the project got stalled out but seeing these pictures will remind me to ask her about it again.
posted by Tom on 2-9-2007 at 11:49 am
oh noes! you forgot one of the most beautiful and impressive cemeteries of the world, the vienna central cemetery, the 19th century “zentralfriedhof”, Europes larges cemetery concerning the number of interred (over three million … vienna nowadays has “only” 1.5 million inhabitants..)
you can find some pictures on my site. btw, keep up the great work!
mandaya
posted by mandaya on 2-9-2007 at 3:31 pm
No mention of destination cemeteries would be complete without the Protestant Cemetery in Macau (about an hour’s hydroplane boat ride from Hong Kong). This cemetery is quite old and beautiful, and every tombstone tells a story. There are many graves of young sailors from a couple of hundred years ago who “died in a fall from aloft”, with quaint misspellings on many tombstones illustrating that shiphands were not always the best educated people, whatever their other skills were. Other graves are of dignitaries of the former colony, so there is quite a mix. The grounds are very well kept and the surroundings are, needless to say, exotic.
posted by Gordon Rogers on 2-14-2007 at 9:02 am
I have to agree that Vienna’s Zentral Friedhof is amazing, particularly the composers’ area, where many of the greats are buried in close proximity: Beethoven, Brahms, many of the Strausses, etc. When we were there last summer, however, the caretaker couldn’t understand that we were not there in search of Mozart’s grave (last year being the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth). Mozart’s grave has been relocated to another cemetery.
posted by Ann Wood on 2-14-2007 at 12:46 pm
San Francisco’s cemetaries have all been moved just south to Colma, guess the dead can’t afford the rents here either. The Jewish cemetary is interesting for the tombs of Emperor Norton, Levi Strauss and interestingly Wyatt Earp (his wife was Jewish).
posted by Lew on 2-14-2007 at 4:09 pm
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT CEMETARIES WILL LOOK LIKE IN A MILLION YEARS. SO MANY PEOPLE WILL BE DECEASED THEN YOU HAVE TO WONDER HOW LARGE (LENGTH AND WIDTH AND PROBABLY HEIGHT)THEY WILL BE. AND FINDING A LOVED ONE COULD BE LIKE LOOKING FOR A NEEDLE IN A HAY STACK.
posted by JOHN BROWN on 2-16-2007 at 3:24 pm
Sleepy Hollow in Concord is kick asss Particularly the Writer’s Ridge or whatever they call it. Happy memories of sneaking in there with friends to visit Thoreau and the Alcotts in the wee hours of the morning/night
posted by GirlNoir on 3-7-2008 at 8:57 am
How could you leave out Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah GA? Beautiful setting and famous folk like Conrad Aiken, Johnny Mercer and Josiah Tattnall III, the man who coined the phrase, “Blood is thicker than water”
posted by Alice on 3-7-2008 at 9:21 am
Key West Cemetery is quite a site. Considering most of Key West is just a foot or two above sea level, most of the graves are above ground. Plus the population of the cemetery is nearly double that of the city itself.
And how can you possibly talk about destination cemeteries without mentioning Arlington National Cemetery?
posted by Florida on 3-7-2008 at 10:52 am
On a related note, a project that one of my professors assigned was to research a dead dictator, including writing the instructions as to how a tourist could find the dictator’s grave. It was going toward a book that someone on campus was writing; I’m not sure if the project was ever completed. I thought that was kind of a weird project, in many ways.
posted by frumpiefox on 3-7-2008 at 1:03 pm
Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio is huge and really gorgeous. I don’t think it’s well-known outside the city, but it should be.
posted by Coeli on 3-7-2008 at 2:12 pm
On a recent trip to Paris, I joined those two million visiting my buddy Oscar. I even have a picture kissing his grave! (Hopefully I didn’t contract any fatal diseases.)
posted by Allison on 3-8-2008 at 7:07 am