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From Victorian Gothic grounds to colorful Maya burial traditions, these cemeteries offer history, architecture, and art beyond the usual tourist sights
Cemeteries. Say the word and most people picture solemn hush and black umbrellas, not sweeping garden paths, marble angels, and mausoleums that look like they were designed by a Roman architect. But wandering into the right one, with sculpture, architecture, and centuries of history, starts to feel less like a graveyard and more like a museum that forgot to charge admission.
This selection of cemeteries near cities around the world proves that some of the most beautiful spots are also the quietest.
The 10 cemeteries below appear on Lonely Planet's list of the most beautiful cemeteries to visit around the world. History runs deep across nearly every entry on this list, whether that means Glasnevin’s ties to Ireland’s independence movement, Powązki’s scars from the Warsaw Uprising, or Père Lachaise’s role in sheltering the final stand of the Paris Commune, giving history-minded travelers plenty of reasons to look beyond famous graves alone. Architecture and design carry equal weight, from Skogskyrkogården’s UNESCO-listed fusion of forest and modernist chapel to Prazeres’ aristocratic mausoleums modeled on ancient temples, each cemetery offering a distinctly different vision of how the living choose to remember the dead. A handful of entries lean instead into color and folk tradition, whether that means Chichicastenango’s rainbow of painted crosses rooted in Maya belief or Merry Cemetery’s witty, hand-carved epitaphs, proving that solemnity isn’t the only language a cemetery can speak. Getting to most of these sites requires little more than a short bus, tram, or metro ride from a major city center, meaning even a single quiet afternoon can turn into a truly worthwhile detour for curious travelers willing to step off the usual well-worn tourist path entirely and spend a full, wonderfully unhurried hour walking slowly among the peaceful, deeply historic old graves.
