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The 10 Best Cemeteries Worth Visiting Even If That Sounds Morbid

Yes, I plan trips around graveyards. No, I'm not a goth. The best cemeteries to visit are quieter than any museum, free, and full of better stories than the guidebook ever tells you.

I know how this sounds. But the best cemeteries to visit are, hand on heart, some of the calmest and most interesting places I’ve ever wandered into — and I’ve wandered into a lot of them, on purpose, in good shoes.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you. A great old cemetery is a free open-air sculpture park where nobody hustles you, nobody’s selling fridge magnets, and the only crowd is usually a few stray cats and one very serious German man with a camera. I’m sold every time.

A waiter in Genoa once told me I was the only person who’d ever asked him for cemetery directions instead of pasta. He drew me a map on a napkin anyway. Best tip I got all trip.

1. Père-Lachaise, Paris

The big one. Forty-four hectares of cobbled lanes and leaning tombs, and yes, everyone goes for Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Skip the lipstick-kiss chaos at Wilde’s grave if you can. Go at 8am when the gates open, turn LEFT immediately, and just get lost among the older 19th-century plots where the moss does its thing. It’s free. Bring a paper map from the conservation office at the entrance because your phone will betray you under those plane trees, every single time.

2. Cementerio de la Recoleta, Buenos Aires

A whole tiny city of marble mausoleums, packed shoulder to shoulder like townhouses for the dead. Free entry. Everyone comes for Evita (Familia Duarte, Tablada side — there’s usually a small clump of people, that’s your landmark). But the real magic is the cat colony that owns the place; the neighbours feed them and they nap on the warm stone like little marble landlords. I spent two hours here and a third of it just watching a ginger tom judge me.

3. Staglieno, Genoa

This is the one. Honestly my favourite, and almost nobody goes. The 19th-century Italian bourgeoisie commissioned full-size marble sculptures of their dead loved ones — so lifelike it’s a little uncanny. The “Caterina Campodonico” statue of a peanut-seller who paid for her own monument in real-life pennies? Devastating and wonderful. Take bus 34 from the centre, it’s about a 20-minute ride, entry is free.

4. Highgate, London (West side)

The West side is the spooky, overgrown Victorian one and you can only see it on a guided tour (around £14, book ahead online — they sell out on weekends). Ivy swallowing the Egyptian Avenue, tombs collapsing romantically into the earth. The East side, where Karl Marx glowers from his giant bronze head, is £4.50 and self-guided. Do both if you’ve got the morning.

5. Mirogoj, Zagreb

Wildly underrated. A long arcaded wall of green-domed pavilions, designed by the same architect who did half of central Zagreb. Free, a short bus ride (number 106 from the cathedral), and it’s where Croats of every faith get buried side by side, which I found quietly moving. Go in autumn when the ivy on the arcades turns red. Trust me.

6. Okunoin, Mount Koya, Japan

Two kilometres of cedar-lined path through 200,000 moss-covered tombs to the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi. You can do a night tour with a monk for about ¥2,500 and it is genuinely the most atmospheric walk of my life — lanterns, fog, the smell of incense and wet cedar. Stay overnight in a temple lodging (shukubo) up the mountain so you’re not racing the last cable car down.

7. Sapântza (“Merry Cemetery”), Romania

The opposite of solemn. Every grave has a bright blue carved cross with a folk-art painting and a cheeky little poem about how the person died or what they were like. One reportedly roasts the deceased for liking the bottle. It’s remote, way up in Maramures, but if you’re road-tripping northern Romania it’s worth the detour. Entry’s a few lei.

8. Glasnevin, Dublin

Ireland’s history told in headstones. The guided tour (about €16) is one of the best I’ve taken anywhere — the guides are storytellers, not script-readers, and the round tower over O’Connell’s crypt has reopened so you can climb it for the view. There’s a pub literally next door (Kavanagh’s, “The Gravediggers”) that’s been pouring pints since 1833. Do not skip the pub.

9. La Chacarita, Buenos Aires

If Recoleta is the posh one, Chacarita is the people’s necropolis — bigger, wilder, less polished, and it’s where Carlos Gardel, the tango god, is buried. People still tuck lit cigarettes between his bronze statue’s fingers. Free, and far less touristed than Recoleta. I liked it more, if I’m honest.

10. Assistens, Copenhagen

Less a cemetery, more a park that Danes happen to sunbathe and picnic in, next to where Hans Christian Andersen and Kierkegaard are buried. Locals jog through it. It feels alive in the nicest way. Free, central (Norrebro), and the cherry blossom path in April is genuinely lovely — not morbid in the slightest.

Go early or go at dusk; midday flattens everything. Bring water and a paper map for the big ones. Be quiet, obviously — people are grieving in there too, and you’re a guest. Don’t pose grinning on a tomb for the gram; you’re better than that. And alot of the smaller ones close at sunset on the dot, so don’t be the idiot (me, in Genoa, 2019) sprinting for a gate that’s already chained.

Weird hobby? Maybe. But I’ve never once regretted an hour spent among the quiet stones, and I think you won’t either.

Go for the sculpture, stay for the cats, and tip your tour guide — the dead don’t tip, so someone has to.

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