Your first impulse when it comes to visiting a new place may not be, far from it, to enter a graveyard. However, some of them have become spaces that are seen by thousands or millions of people each yearessentially on days like the All Saints Day. The reasons are many and sometimes the main attraction of these places has to do with the people who are buried in them: painters, singers, sculptors, scientists…
It is, perhaps, a way to feel closer to those who inhabit these spaces, to stop time and dialogue with them… or with ourselves, in an atmosphere of silence, introspection and recollection. In addition, there are cemeteries with a long history, in which art is confused with mysteryand where all kinds of rituals related to our spirituality. What are the most visited cemeteries in the world? What curious anecdotes do they contain and why is it worth visiting them?
What are the most visited cemeteries in the world?
Burying our loved ones once deceased is a custom that human beings have maintained for around 100,000 years. It is a ritual with a vast tradition, and it is logical that there are spaces dedicated to it, full of history and legends related to the mysteries of death. Maybe that’s why many cemeteries have become places of recollection, of dialogue with those who are no longer and, in a certain way, in spaces in which time stops, or goes back, or, in any case, becomes relative.
In addition, visiting cemeteries has become, for some time now, in a ritual that goes beyond the presence of loved ones in these spaces. As with temples and other spiritual places, there is an attraction to them that transcends their initial function but, in any case, still has a lot to do with our spirituality.
These are some of the most visited cemeteries in the world:
- Peré Lachaise (Paris, France). It is the most visited cemetery in the world and dates back to 1804. At the beginning of the 19th century, several cemeteries were built in the French capital designed to replace the old city cemeteries. Thus, on the outskirts of the capital, the Montmartre Cemetery, the Père Lachaise Cemetery, the Montparnasse Cemetery and the Passy Cemetery were located, covering all the cardinal points. It has more than 70,000 graves and was enlarged five times. Gardens, paths, sculptures, mausoleums… are distributed inside, telling us about different styles and historical periods. In fact, the Parisians use it as a space in which to walk. Personalities such as Molière, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Delacroix, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas, Gay-Lussac and Jim Morrison are buried there.
- Montparnasse (Paris, France). Also in Paris, the Montparnasse cemetery is one of the largest and most visited in the world. It was known as ‘Le Cimetière du Sud’ (the southern cemetery) and is part of the project to move the cemeteries to the outskirts of the city in the first half of the 19th century. Located in what, at the beginning of the 20th century, was the neighborhood of artists and writers par excellence (as an alternative to Montmartre, the epicenter of the previous cultural generation), it is much visited by lovers of literature, since it is where the Julio Cortazar’s tomb. Personalities such as Carlos Fuentes, César Vallejo, Charles Baudelaire, Guy de Maupassant, Man Ray, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Susan Sontag also ‘live forever’ within its walls.
- Zentralfriedhof (Vienna, Austria). Not only is it one of the largest cemeteries in the world, but in it you can find the tomb of multiple historical personalities such as Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert or Strauss. It was founded in 1863, occupies 2.4 square kilometers and has more than 330,000 graves. It is located in the southern part of the city, in the Simmering neighborhood. As a curiosity, in addition to a Catholic area, it has another Protestant, another Orthodox, and two Jewish cemeteries. The oldest of these was destroyed by the Nazis during the Night of Broken Glass, but 60,000 graves remain.
- From Recoleta (Buenos Aires, Argentina). This huge cemetery is located in the city of Buenos Aires, in the Recoleta neighborhood. It contains the tombs of well-known people and was inaugurated in 1822, being the first public cemetery in the city. It contains the tombs of Eva Perón in the mausoleum of the Duarte family, Remedios de Escalada de San Martín, Mitre, Lavalle, Honorio Pueyrredón, José Hernández, Vicente López y Planes, Alem, Yrigoyen, Raúl Alfonsín, Victoria Ocampo, Silvina Ocampo, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Blanca Podestá.
- Highgate Cemetery (London, UK). This cemetery, also known as St James’s Cemetery, is located north of London, and is from the Victorian era. Legends about vampires and ghosts surround it, and it is covered with vegetation that gives an even more mysterious and gothic touch to its combination of tombs. Among others, Karl Marx, the Dickens family, Michel Faraday and George Eliot, Eric Hobsbawm and Herbert Spencer are buried here.