Notable graves you've visited

[smmudge]

This is in the travel forum as it's usually part of a holiday or (more likely) city break. But I don't get to do it as often as I would if left to my own devices, as traipsing around cemeteries isn't everyone's idea of fun who knew??

I feel like I've built up a respectable collection of famous graves I've visited, some more famous than others and some more niche.

Post here the notable graves you've been to and where you've found them.

Let me start with the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. If you want to see some dead composers, this is the place to come as they all share a corner (how did they know to leave a space for the next one?). But also an amazing cemetery in general, probably the biggest I've been to.

















I knew Schoenberg was around there somewhere. Some gravestones aren't that easy to find. We were just walking back when this intriguing square standing in its corner caught my eye. I'm so glad I took a closer look.

 

[weepiper]

Keats and Gramsci in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.

 

[smmudge]

Yes weepiper Actually I didn't visit Keats or Shelley at the protestant/non-Catholic/going to hell cemetery in Rome but...

One thing I love about cemeteries is they are like art galleries for sculpture. Lots of weeping women. But the most moving gravestone I've seen is for Emelyn Storey, The angel of grief.






Don't think my photos really do it justice.
And Gramsci is there too



And there's a cat sanctuary there!

 

[hash tag]

Been to many uk graveyards and seen the last resting place of many notables. Patrick Caufield is one of my faves

 

[scifisam]

In Copenhagen, for some reason lots of people were napping in the cemetery, right on the garvestones - they didn't appear to be homeless, just getting some sun while sleeping. So I also napped right on Hans Christian Anderson's grave.

The cemetery at Highgate is famously good for Karl Max and so on. I liked that Douglas Adam's grave had lots of pencils stuck in the ground as a memorial, and we had one handy, so left it there too; one of my favourite authors, someone I would have love to have met.

What was surprising there was how moving one grave was - Jeremy Beadle, presenter of annoying TV shows. It's only his ashes that are buried, but the gravestone was a beautiful one, with books, and the inscription "writer, presenter, curator of oddities," and the second line, "ask my friends." When we went, there were fresh flowers on it and it was even better tended than the other graves around it, as if someone who loved him very much was coming in every week to keep it up.



The Egyptian avenue at the other side of cemetery is well worth visiting when it's open. You have to go around in a group with a guide, and I was too slow, so they left me sitting on a gravestone on my own for half an hour while they did the rest of the tour, but what I did see was pretty much unique for England.

 

[smmudge]

Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen at Assistens cemetery in Copenhagen. Another peaceful cemetery, lots of space and very spread out for a city cemetery.

 

[Voley]

Jim Morrison in Pere-Lachaise, Paris.

No photos - I went before the days of camera phones. Someone had half-inched the bust by the time I went but the usual detritus of roaches/empty tequila bottle were present. There's a more formal gravestone rather than a fan-made one nowadays, I think.

 

[Orang Utan]

Also in Pere Lachaise is Modigliani’s grave, which has a headstone that is of course Modiglianesque.
Also, Edith Piaf’s grave has a perpetual single freshly cut rose on it.
There’s also a whole bunch of harrowing holocaust memorials from different concentration camps

 

[farmerbarleymow]

This is my favourite gravestone - up in Saddleworth. Not famous in their own right, but an unusually graphic description of their end. It's in a lovely old churchyard (St Chads) up on the hill above the village, with a great pub next door.

The Bill o’ Jacks Murders – Mysterious Britain & Ireland

 

[JimW]

Only really locally famous but I was on a really excellent dole scheme when I was young where I'd get dropped off in various local country churchyards to do sketches of Saxon features in the brickwork for a local archaeological survey, left on your own all day with drawing board. One was at Miserden where it turns out the poet Frank Mansell is buried, just up the road from where he lived in Sheepscombe. He was big mate with Laurie Lee who helped get his collection of poems published. Anyway, used to eat my lunch with Frank and think about him in just the sort of lovely spot he celebrated in his writing.

 

[chainsawjob]

'Alice in Wonderland' aka Alice Hargreaves nee Liddell. Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

 

[chainsawjob]

One thing I love about cemeteries is they are like art galleries for sculpture. Lots of weeping women

Not anyone famous, but I liked this one I saw yesterday at a small village church.

 

[dessiato]

Even if I go to cemetries I seldom take pics. But this one I did. We had a friend who has died but who loved her, so in memory of our friend we took a picture of the grave.

 

[weltweit]

Bergen Belsen ..

Does that count?

 

[smmudge]

Also in Pere Lachaise is Modigliani’s grave, which has a headstone that is of course Modiglianesque.
Also, Edith Piaf’s grave has a perpetual single freshly cut rose on it.
There’s also a whole bunch of harrowing holocaust memorials from different concentration camps

Ah I didn't know Modigliani was at Pere Lachaise, that's a shame I would have liked to have seen it.

I did see Chopin and Oscar Wilde there

 

[chilango]

Lenin
Mao
Trotsky
Che
Zapata
Eva Peron

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I liked Undercliffe Cemetery when we visited on a student trip (no idea why we were took there though).

The place is full of over the top victorian graves.

Been to many uk graveyards and seen the last resting place of many notables. Patrick Caufield is one of my faves
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That's brilliant - I'd love that for my headstone when I pop my clogs.

 

[smmudge]

Montparnasse also in Paris. Very crowded but some of the most interesting sculptures I've seen.

 

[davesgcr]

Quite a few really. Notable ones being.

Celia Johnson

Margaret Lockwood

Edith Thompson (now reburied in the City of London Cemetery - mistakenly hung in the 1920's)

Possibly on of the most inspirational readings of the 20thC , Viktor Klemperer in the Friedhof , Dolschzen , Dresden.....(took some finding , and I swear I made a connection with him at the graveside) .

 

[chainsawjob]

Obligatory Marx, Highgate



(Half-formed comment about the irony of my attempt to get a shot without the workers in )

 

[smmudge]

Dorotheenstadtischer, Berlin





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[Steel Icarus]

Only notable to me - family graves I've had to look for. Surprisingly emotional, possibly tied up in the fact that save a few genes and the odd photo a slab of stone is all people leave, or left anyway. I guess in the future will have left a lot more of themselves, certainly in terms of duckface and party pics.

 

[skyscraper101]

From my living in LA days, and visiting the Hollywood Forever cemetary.

Johnny Ramone



Toto the dog from Wizard of Oz.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Grandads at Tynecot

 

[hash tag]

We visited St Thomas's Winchelsea only yesterday. Unassuming graveyard, good looking unfinished church, great views and Spike

 

[Steel Icarus]

I don't know Gaelic so can you tell me if it says "I told you I was ill" on it like he promised?

 

[JimW]

I don't know Gaelic so can you tell me if it says "I told you I was ill" on it like he promised?

It does.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

Anne Bronte's in Scaborough, Elvis' in Gracelands.

Otherwise do the Pyramids, Valley of the Kings and the Terracotta Warrior site count?!

 

[Pickman's model]

Wilde, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Jim Morrison, Baudelaire, webb-ellis, Marx

 

[pseudonarcissus]

Eva Peron

i don’t have a photo of Little John’s grave in Hathersage. They don’t encourage photos of Lenin in his. @ssmudge did Montparnasse already