There are around 10,000 people interred at Symonds Street Cemetery ‒ though around three quarters of the headstones have decayed owing to their often timber construction.
Sadly, a nine-year-old boy named William Mason was the first recorded burial at the graveyard which was operational from 1842-1886, Auckland’s – and perhaps the country’s – oldest urban burial site.
There is something strangely soothing about wandering such forgotten, final resting places. They often serve as oases of meditative calm encased within dense urban spaces, where birds’ chirps and trees’ rustles are finally able to drown out the distant city chatter. In his book, Cemeteries, Keith Eggener reveals that in the early 19th century, before there were public parks and galleries, graveyards were seen as a place to gather to socialise, picnic, hunt, and even race carriages. Such was their popularity, there were even guidebooks published about the best ones.
Now, we have ‘cemetery tourism’ an industry dedicated to those who like to wander graveyards – known as taphophiles. Verve takes a look at some of the most magnificent burial grounds
Okunoin, Japan
Japan’s largest cemetery, Okunion, sits in the Mount Kōya complex part of a Unesco World Heritage Site. Established in 816 AD, the atmospheric plot is buried within a cedar forest – and often a layer of mist – and houses more than 200,000 graves and 100 temples. The cemetery’s centrepiece is the mausoleum of Kōbō-Daishi, the 9th-century founder of Shingon Buddhism, illuminated by 10,000 lanterns (visitors usually attend to plots at night, adding another dimension to the spiritual landscape). Most other graves are marked more humbly by way of small stones or statues such as that of Jiko a deity said to protect women, children, and travellers. The cemetery is considered the spiritual home of the Kōyasan Shingon sect of Buddhism, with monks living on site since the early 800s.
Cimetière du Père Lachaise, France
This Parisian burial ground is possibly the world’s most famous – and visited – cemetery, revered for its tree-lined cobblestone paths and handsome tombs. Napoleon declared that “every citizen has the right to be buried regardless of race or religion” when he established the site in 1804, which was first used to re-bury bodies from other parts of the city. In order to boost the plot’s prestige, the corpses of high-profile people were first moved there, and now Père Lachaise’s eternal residents list is often referred to as a ‘Who’s Who’ of the dearly departed with graves occupied by the likes of Édith Piaf, Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde. Jim Morrison’s is considered the rockstar grave of them all – literally, and figuratively – so often vandalised that it has its own security.
La Recoleta, Argentina
Another protected grave sits in Buenos Aires’s La Recoleta cemetery: that of former first lady of Argentina, Eva Perón whose body was once stolen and mutilated by enemies of her family. Another grim graveyard story concerns 19-year-old socialite Rufina Cambaceres who is known as “the girl who died twice” owing to her being buried prematurely due to cataplexy (a condition whereby someone is awake but cannot move). Her coffin was later opened to discover scratch marks on the lid and her face. Such macabre tales belie the beauty of this sprawling necropolis named the City of the Dead thanks to its extravagant tombs and monuments built in the styles of art nouveau, baroque, art deco, and neo gothic, and adorned with domed top and intricately carved statues. Free tours are available along its narrow laneways, and it’s considered among the city’s top attractions.
Highgate Cemetery, UK
Not so fun fact: among the inhabitants of Highgate Cemetery is the poisoned Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko who had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin such were the levels of his body’s radioactivity. Other notable names among the 170,000 plots of this legendary London graveyard include the painter Lucien Freud, the novelist George Eliot, and, perhaps most famously, the philosopher Karl Mark. Considered almost as much a parkland, the Victorian necropolis is noted for the overgrown woodland and ivy that intrude upon and around many of its gothic graves, the green foliage contrasting against the Dickensian grey and providing shelter for wildlife such as foxes.
Mount of Olives, Jerusalem
This cemetery resting on the slopes of its eponymous mount is visually striking owing to its position and uniformness rather than for grandiose graves and groves. More than 100,000 terracotta tombs overlook desert and the walled city of Jerusalem, its hallowed grounds occupied by ancient kings, rabbis, prophets, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister Menachem Begin. In use since biblical times, Jesus is said to have walked the slope, and according to the Book of Zechariah, this 3,000-year-old final resting place will be the site of the second coming. The biggest and holiest cemetery in the Jewish world, Mount of Olives also contains Muslim and Christian burial grounds.
