Unusual cemeteries are found in countries all around the world – here are ten that will surprise and amaze you – from gravesites with gorgeous statues to cliff-hanging coffins. Discover the unique ways different cultures honor their deceased loved ones. Before you know it, you’ll be dying to visit!
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #1
A Very Merry, Merry Cemetery!
In 1936, Stan Patras began carving wooden crosses to mark the graves of community members in his small town of Sapanta, Romania. For more than forty years, he kept carving, eventually completing several hundred crosses.
And they weren’t just ordinary planks of wood cobbled together either. Each one was uniquely designed for the deceased. Then when Patras finished carving, he took up his paintbrush and added brilliant colors to the memorials.
Patras memorialized the deceased by carving their occupation, hobby, or talent, such as shepherds tending their sheep, mothers cooking, coal miners, and musicians playing the violin.
Patras sometimes designed grave markers that showed how the deceased passed away, such as a girl who was hit by a car and a drowning boy. He didn’t confine himself to traditional flowery epitaphs either. Inscriptions include references to priests that envy the wicked, drunkards, and mother-in-law jokes.
Before Patras died, he carved his own memorial with a self-portrait. His epitaph says that he supported his family financially from the time he was 14 years old.
To this day, Patras’ work is being carried on by his apprentice, Dumitru Pop. Pop carves and paints 20 -30 grave markers each year, as needed.
This delightful burial ground is officially named Cimitirul Vesel but it is nicknamed Merry Cemetery. It’s a fitting name for a place that makes visitors smile.
Click on the following links to see more Merry Cemetery grave markers:
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #2
No Ordinary Bushes
Manicured hedges are not unusual in cemeteries, but the hedges in Tulcán Municipal Cemetery in Carchi, Ecuador are truly works of art. The 3-acre graveyard features more than 100 creations. It’s a topiary wonderland!
In 1936, the cemetery caretaker Josè María Azael Franco Guerrero began sculpting bushes and trees into elaborate topiaries.
Using pre-Columbian art as his inspiration and greenery as his canvas, Guerrero spent years creating animals, Incan figures, and mythical creatures to beautify the cemetery.
When he passed away in 1985, Guerrero was fittingly buried in the cemetery in the shadow of his own work. The epitaph on his gravestone says, “A cemetery so beautiful, it invites one to die.”
Grerrero’s impressive topiaries are now cared for by his five sons and other staff members.
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #3
Gold in the Graveyard
Goldfield, Nevada was once the state’s largest boomtown, springing up nearly overnight during a gold rush. From 1904 to 1918, the population jumped to nearly 20,000, and the location was dubbed the “World’s Greatest Gold Camp.”
Between 1903 and 1940, precious metals valued at more than $86,765,000 were extracted. Gold mining was so lucrative that miners hollowed out their boot heels and ax picks to transport their gold in secrecy.
So, what goes along with a serious gold rush boomtown? An incredibly interesting cemetery, of course! Goldfield Cemetery.
In quirky Wild West style, there are epitaphs on the gravestones ranging from the humorous “Man Died Eating Library Paste” to “Here Lies Shorty” and “Died of Gunshot by Deputy Sheriff”.
Goldfield Cemetery was originally located in the center of town but then the railroad came through. The railroad company didn’t want passengers stepping off the train and onto graves, so a group of men known as the “Official Ghouls” unearthed the remains in the middle of the night and moved them to their current location at the edge of town.
As a sidenote, there is a Clown Motel next door to the cemetery. (Sleep well!?)
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #4
An Outdoor Art Museum
While other cemeteries of its day were built to solve problems – such as overcrowded churchyards or an increase in deaths after an epidemic – Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in Genoa, Italy was constructed for beauty.
Since its beginnings in 1886, this cemetery has indeed often been called one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world.
This is due in large part to Monumental Cemetery’s amazing statues. It is filled with one-of-a-kind marble sculptures that would rival those in any world-class art museum.
In fact, many wealthy Italians commissioned their hand-carved statues years before they died so they would have a chance to enjoy them before they passed away.
Bring your walking shoes if you visit Monumental Cemetery. There are more than 117,000 gravesites spanning 250 acres!
Click HERE for a blog post about Monumental Cemetery to see more amazing Italian statues.
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #5
The Hanging Coffins
The Philippines is home to a “cemetery in the air”.
The coffins are usually built by the individuals who will occupy them.
Once they have been laid to rest in the coffin, it is either stacked in a cave or suspended from the face of a cliff. The indigenous Kankanaey people belive that this brings the deceased closer to the afterlife.
Hiking through the jungle, one can see wooden coffins hanging from the sides of cliffs in Echo Valley, Sagada.
Although the Echo Valley examples are the most well-known, this gravity-defying funerary practice is not exclusive to the Philippines. Hanging coffins are also used in China and Indonesia.
Click HERE to learn about a similar practice in Indonesia of carving crypts into the sides of cliffs. The Indonesian Tojaran people of Sulawesi Island even have a festival every three years where family members remove their relative’s bodies from the crypts, clean them, redress them, and take them on a walk through their village. Learn more HERE.
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #6
Lucky Cemetery Restaurant
When Krishnan Kutti realized that the land he had purchased in Ahmedabad, India for his new restaurant was over an old cemetery, he had a dilemma.
Kutti could pave over the graves or disinter the remains and have them moved. Or he could simply build his restaurant around them, making the gravesites part of the restaurant’s attraction. He decided the graves would stay put.
A fence with steel bars was erected around the graves to protect them but otherwise, the diners and the deceased are side-by-side. The bright green stone coffins are scattered around the restaurant in a random pattern.
It is not known who is buried in the graves but legend is that they belong to Muslim followers of a 16th-century Sufi saint.
Having the graves on display in the restaurant is not meant to be morbid or disrespectful. In fact, the restaurant promotes the idea that eating next to the graves is good luck. That is true for Kutti anyway, as the restaurant has been a success for over a decade. He has even named the business Lucky Restaurant.
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #7
Chainsaw Sculptures in the Cemetery
Glenwood Cemetery in Washington D.C. is home to unique wooden sculptures carved from dead trees. Glenwood has many trees that are more than 200 years old. So when high winds hit the area in 2008, several of the older trees fell to the ground.
The toppled trees were unsightly, so cemetery managers at Glenwood invited chainsaw artist Dayton Scoggins to carve them into unusual wooden statues.
Even though this angel orginially had two wings, some like it better just the way it is.
Luciano De Crescenzo (18 August 1928 – 18 July 2019), an Italian writer, actor, and director, would have liked this sculpture of a one-winged angel. He wrote, “We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”
The largest of the sculptures is 30 feet tall and features a large dragon capturing a smaller dragon.
Another is a saber tooth tiger with woodland animals at its feet.
Check out those teeth and claws! I wouldn’t want to meet him in real life in a cemetery at night!
Dayton Scoggins also carved a wooden angel with chains.
Scoggins found his inspiration for this statue in the Biblical book of Revelations chapter 20, verses 1-3, and 7-8, which reads:
“And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, And set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that, he must be loosed a little season . . . And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations . . . “
As cemetery visitors come to visit their loved ones’ gravesides, they can look on this statue and ponder how an angel was given the power to bind Satan with chains. This sculpture was intended to be a reminder that we too can bind the powers of evil by living righteously.
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #8
Tombstone Eating Trees
Arlington National Cemetery is often considered the most famous historic cemetery in the United States. There have been about 400,000 burials there since 1864 representing troops from U.S. armed forces from every American war. Row after row of the white marble headstones are shaded by more than 8,600 towering trees.
But some of those trees are mischieveously swallowing up headstones. Each year another inch or two of the grave markers disappear inside the new growth of bark and wood.
In the older sections of the cemetery, marble markers are deeply embedded in the tree roots, most from those who served in the Civil War, World War I, or World War II.
When the trees eventually die, maybe some future lumberjack arborist will be asked to cut into the solid timber with chainsaws to resurrect the lost monuments.
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #9
The Largest and Oldest Jewish Cemetery
The Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery, located in Jerusalem, is the largest and the oldest historic Jewish cemetery in the world. It is also considered to be the most holy Jewish cemetery in the world.
Having been in continuous use for more than 3,000 years, the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery contains approximately 150,000 burials.
The Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery is also known as “The City of the Dead” in contrast to the nearby city of Jerusalem, which has been dubbed “The City of Life”.
The site was originally chosen as a burial ground because the land was mostly made up of limestone soil. Limestone is too soft to serve as a suitable foundation for building structures so the land was largely uninhabited. This meant there was room for the cemetery. As a bonus, limestone is ideal for burial grounds since it is easy to dig in the soft soil.
For centuries, it has been a fervent desire of many Jews to be buried on the Mount of Olives due to a Midrash teaching that the Resurrection of the Dead would begin on the Mount of Olives when the Messiah appears.
By the way, did you know that all of Israel’s gravestones have been documented with the BillionGraves app in partnership with MyHeritage? Click HERE to learn more.
10 Unusual Cemeteries from Around the World, #10
Polish Folk Art
The ninth cemetery of our unusual cemeteries is located in Zakopane, Poland and it is called “The Cemetery of the Meritorious at Pęksowy Brzyzek”.
“Brzyzek” means “a cliff above a stream” in the local highlander dialect . But the site is also simply called “The Old Cemetery” – for obvious reasons.
The Old Cemetery is filled with charming folk art. Many of the graves are marked with handmade wooden structures that seem to be a cross between a birdhouse, a dollhouse, and a nativity set.
In 1861, following massacres committed by Russia in the cities of Warsaw and Vilnius, locals from Zakopane erected a cross and a plaque in the center of the cemetery. The inscription on the plaque said, “Eternal rest to the brothers innocently murdered in Warsaw and Vilnius”.
A year later, government officials ordered the inscription to be removed but the art in the cemetery remains religious and patriotic even down to our day.
Visitors to The Old Cemetery can’t say enough about how delightful it is:
- “Walking through this cemetery felt more like walking through a secret magical garden.”
- “Each gravesite is so meticulously maintained and so utterly beautiful. They are truly works of art.”
- “As the sun kissed the graves through the trees that swayed in the wind and dandelion seeds danced softly through the air ~ it was an experience that touched my heart and left me speechless.”
- “I’ve never visited a more beautiful cemetery where the dead felt so cherished and honored.”
- In the words of a visitor’s little daughter: “This place is magic, Mom”. ️
Volunteer
BillionGraves needs volunteers to take photos of gravestones! When you take photos in your own local cemeteries and I take them in mine, we will all help each other to find our ancestor’s final resting places.
Every time a photo is taken with the BillionGraves app, the GPS coordinates are automatically added.
Click HERE to get started. You are welcome to do this at your own convenience, no permission from us is needed. If you still have questions after you have clicked on the link to get started, email us at: Volunteer@BillionGraves.com.
Happy Cemetery Hopping!
Cathy Wallace
