11 most beautiful cemeteries in the world
<p><strong>Beautiful burial sites</strong></p>
<p>In her book <em>Cities of the Dead: The World’s Most Beautiful Cemeteries</em>, taphophile Yolanda Zappaterra presents a guide to some 50 burial sites around the world.</p>
<p>From Japan and Australia to Ireland and Senegal, she delves into wide-ranging rituals, fashions and customs around death and burial to present an absorbing picture of the after world. Here is a small selection of her favourites from the book.</p>
<p><strong>Issyk-Kul cemeteries, Kyrgyzstan</strong></p>
<p>A complex cultural mix of nomadic Central Asian, Islamic and Soviet makes the many cemeteries around the Issyk-Kul lake region of Kyrgyzstan as unique as they are arresting – so much so that one of them, Sary-Kamysh, was voted one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world by National Geographic.</p>
<p>Spindly wire-frame yurt skeletons, brick-built monuments that look like mini-mosques, decorated towers and even onion-domed mausoleums styled on Russian churches offer a fascinating illustration of the region’s mix and heritage.</p>
<p><strong>Fadiouth Shell Island, Joal-Fadiouth, Mbour, Senegal</strong></p>
<p>Sitting like a surreal mirage on the Senegalese coastline some 100km south of Dakar lies what must surely be the noisiest cemetery in the world.</p>
<p>Respectful silence is impossible as your feet crunch over the ton upon ton of broken clam shells that make up the pretty island of Fadiouth, a traditional estuary fishing village linked to its cemetery via a wooden bridge.</p>
<p>The cemetery is notable for being used by both the predominant Christian population but also a significant Islamic population, including the first missionary who died in Senegal.</p>
<p><strong>Gubbio Cemetery, Mount Ingino, Umbria, Italy</strong></p>
<p>Modern-day cemeteries often focus on the functional, but a visionary town council and architect will sometimes create a cemetery that’s uniquely expressive, as they have here on the outskirts of one of Italy’s most important medieval towns.</p>
<p>Influences from the town, such as narrow streets, tall medieval buildings and the famous Palazzo dei Consoli, have led to courtyards connected by monumental blocks and corridors which their architect Dragoni describes as “squares of silence, offering the public an opportunity to pause and reflect”.</p>
<p><strong>The Waverley Cemetery, Sydney, NSW, Australia</strong></p>
<p>Perched high on the Bronte cliffs, the 50,000 or so graves looking out over the deep blue waters of the Pacific Ocean’s Tasman Sea are surely set in one of the most beautiful spots imaginable for an afterlife.</p>
<p>But it’s not just the location that makes Waverley so appealing; the romantic flourishes of 19th-century European cemeteries were instrumental in the design, and the mini Gothic chapels, weeping angels, beatific cherubs, classical columns and mournful figures of death, most created of white marble and cream limestone, create a beautiful aesthetic too.</p>
<p><strong>Skogskyrkogården Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm, Sweden</strong></p>
<p>Over time, all cemeteries form symbiotic relationships between the manmade and natural worlds. But Skogskyrkogården was established with that symbiosis at the core of its being, with the concept and experience of mourning and healing at its heart.</p>
<p>Set amid some 10,000 soaring pines, diminutive graves that are all less than waist height (even Greta Garbo’s, whose simple stone is carved with just her signature) make Skogskyrkogården an intensely spiritual experience. And on All Saints Day, when families bring candles and lanterns, that experience is nothing short of magical.</p>
<p><strong>Kensal Green Cemetery, London, UK</strong></p>
<p>When the barrister George Frederick Carden visited Paris’s Père Lachaise in Paris in 1821, he determined to come back to London and set up a similar cemetery. Twelve years later Kensal Green, the first of London’s Magnificent Seven garden-style cemeteries, opened to huge acclaim, with London society in thrall to the Arcadian idyll.</p>
<p>Two centuries on, that classical idyll and the thousands of Gothic graves and mausoleums make for an irresistible combination, as seen in the 1973 British horror movie Theatre of Blood. It’s a fine place to go celebrity grave hunting too, but you’ll search in vain for the tombs of Ingrid Bergman, Freddie Mercury or Joe Strummer. While all were cremated here, none, as many people believe, are buried here.</p>
<p><strong>Merry Cemetery (Cimitirul Vesel), Săpânța, Romania</strong></p>
<p>Most cemeteries are sombre spaces, but the Merry Cemetery is just what its name suggests, with colourful folk art scenes painted onto over 800 bright blue wooden crosses, all bearing unique illustrated stories and poems about the deceased.</p>
<p>They are the work of two local craftsmen, Stan Ioan Pătraş, who carved them from the 1930s until his death in 1977, and his apprentice Dumitru Pop, who is still creating them today. Families give them free reign on how the life of the deceased is represented, though what the angel in red underpants represents is anyone’s guess!</p>
<p><strong>Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, USA</strong></p>
<p>The abundance of life across this most fecund of cemeteries is almost an affront to the dead contained within it – lush greenery and vibrant colours are everywhere you look, from roses and spring azaleas in dazzling colours to live oaks thought to date back 250 years.</p>
<p>Bright green moss wraps tree trunks in a soft jewel-like down while silvery grey-white Spanish moss hangs down from branches like so many dense cobwebs to create a wonderfully gothic canopy over the graves below. As if responding to all this excess, the funerary art and sculpture here is some of the most beautiful in the country.</p>
<p><strong>Père Lachaise, Paris, France</strong></p>
<p>Père Lachaise is the archetypal Victorian garden cemetery, and with such celebrities as Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Proust, Modigliani, Chopin and Maria Callas buried here, it’s no wonder it’s the most visited cemetery in the world (three million people visit each year).</p>
<p>Thanks to scale – 97 sections spread across 106 acres – it never feels crowded. Wandering among the tombs of the million or so bodies believed to have been buried here since it opened in 1804 (not including at least the same number of remains in the columbarium and the Aux Morts ossuary), exploring the wonderful array of funerary styles across the site, is an absolute pleasure.</p>
<p><strong>Okunoin Cemetery, Mount Koya, Japan</strong></p>
<p>Nothing prepares you for the sight of the 10,000 lanterns that lie at the heart of Japan’s largest cemetery, even though you’ll have had a chance to acclimatise yourself to its magical, misty mien by walking, if you arrive at it via the traditional entrance of Ichinohashi Bridge, through two kilometres of a sacred and eerie 1,200-year-old mountain forest.</p>
<p>In it lie the lichen- and moss-covered graves of 200,000 Buddhist monks, feudal lords and military commanders, as well as more than 100 temples and monasteries and that lantern-lit nucleus that is the mausoleum of Kōbō-Daishi, also known as Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism.</p>
<p>And because Okunoin is open 24 hours a day, you can visit it at night, when a monk guide can offer insights into that add extra depth and intensity to the experience. But even better is a visit at dawn, when out of the mountain mist appear the ghostly orange-clad forms of monks coming to leave their food offerings to Kobo Daishi.</p>
<p><strong>Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina</strong></p>
<p>The good, the bad and the wealthy are all buried in Buenos Aires’ famous Recoleta Cemetery, a quintessential necropolis whose planned grid mimics the city beyond, with tree-lined thoroughfares branching out into smaller streets and passageways lined with almost 4,700 vaults. For no one is buried underground at Recoleta, with the notable exception of Eva Perón, or Evita, the “First Lady of Argentina”, who lies deep underground in a heavily fortified crypt.</p>
<p>The extraordinary mish-mash of architectural styles and elaborate statuary ensure there is always something wonderful to look at, and many of the tombs are still in use and lovingly maintained; others lie derelict and neglected, strewn with broken glass, fading plastic flowers and rubbish, a dusty coffin half visible among the cobwebs.</p>
<p><em><span id="docs-internal-guid-e6c4d8e1-7fff-8cbc-f28e-e475e636e6f8">Written by Yolanda Zappaterra. This article first appeared in <a href="https://www.readersdigest.co.nz/travel/destinations/11-most-beautiful-cemeteries-in-the-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reader’s Digest</a>. For more of what you love from the world’s best-loved magazine, <a href="http://readersdigest.innovations.co.nz/c/readersdigestemailsubscribe?utm_source=over60&utm_medium=articles&utm_campaign=RDSUB&keycode=WRA87V" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here’s our best subscription offer.</a></span></em></p>
<p><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>
