beautiful cemetaries

Top 10 Most Ethereal Cemeteries Around the World

28 August 2019

Cemeteries can be oases of peace for both the dead and the living.

Death is the great human unifier. Nobody knows much about the place we go after our lives on earth have concluded, but we do know that after we die, our bodies will likely end up in a cemetery.

Graveyards are everywhere—almost every city and town has one—and though they are places of mourning, they can also boast great architectural and natural beauty. Sometimes, they're very peaceful and quiet, making them ideal places to reflect and gain perspective on this short, strange life.

This seaside cemetery is located on the ragged cliffs of Sydney, Australia. Opened in 1877, it offers stunning views of the ocean and all that will be left of us once the final curtain is drawn. Originally a site of aboriginal significance, the cemetery is now a mix of the picturesque and the macabre.
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Located outside of Oaxaca, Mexico, this cemetery is at its most spellbinding when illuminated with candles and roses each year on the Day of the Dead, though it's a sight to see any day of the year. It contains many moss-cloaked crypts as well as nearly 7,000 graves, and it's on Mexico's National Register of Historic Places.
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This dreamy cemetery in Mother Teresa Sarani, Kolkata, India is notable for its natural beauty. Many of the tombs are covered in moss and vines, and its Gothic architecture is in various stages of verdant disarray.
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With its checkerboard floor and vine-covered pillars, this cemetery gives off distinctly dreamy Alice in Wonderland vibes, and looks like the sort of place that would be littered with portals to alternate dimensions. Located in scenic Zagreb, Poland, the cemetery features impressive architecture including a multitude of domed buildings, stunning memorials, and lush flower gardens.
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Hollywood legends and death have always been intertwined, and that's what you'll find in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the place where famous people go to be further immortalized. The cemetery also offers film screenings for the living and has been mythologized in many songs and films. Next to a star on Hollywood Boulevard, it's the place where all wannabe silver screen stars dream of winding up.
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Noteworthy for its refined architecture and contemplative atmosphere, this North London cemetery is lined with wildflowers, unmarked graves, and stunning statues of angels and sacred beings. It's also generated a fair number of legends, including the story of the Highgate Vampire, a folktale that proposes the cemetery is haunted by ghostly, blood-sucking, undead monsters—some of which happen to ride bikes.
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Located in Sleepy Hollow, just an hour's drive north of New York City, this cemetery holds Washington Irving's body, and is at the center of the town that inspired his classic short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." This expansive graveyard is full of mossy crypts half-sunken into the earth and stone angels that gaze over the hills towards the distant city skyline. It's particularly beautiful when the northeast's autumnal colors are on display, but it's a marked departure from the rush of the living world any time of the year.
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This old cemetery is located on the edge of a cliff by the sea in the Scottish highlands. Soundtracked by crashing waves and howling winds and perpetually cloaked in Scotland's typical layer of mist, it's eerie, peaceful, and humble—dare we say, #graveyardgoals?
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As the most prestigious cemetery in Paris, this necropolis is almost as refined and stuffy as the city itself (no offense, Parisians). It contains almost every style of architecture and holds the bodies of luminaries like Frederic Chopin, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, and more.
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Located in Warsaw, this cemetery features a number of famous statues, folk art pieces, and beautiful monuments, all worn away by time. It's almost as much of an art museum as it is a cemetery, and hold's some of the world's most famous sepulchral art—as well as many, many corpses, slowly decaying six feet under the soil.
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