The best cemeteries are often the most beautiful, but it’s more than that. They’re also poignant, historical, living memorials welcoming to visitors.

I’ve dedicated a fair amount of travel to visit some of the world’s best cemeteries, those with famous graves, unique architecture, or spectacular locations. Often, people think this is a strange pastime, maybe it is, but I’m not alone. I recently learned there’s an entire tribe of grave lovers like me called taphophiles.

We’re also called “tombstone tourists,” “cemetery enthusiasts,” and or “gravers,” among some other less witty phrases. The joke’s on them because cemeteries have some of the most interesting sculptures and history in the world.

Discovering the Best Cemeteries

I learned I was part of this elusive group of graveyard enthusiasts while rambling about Highgate Cemetery in England.  

While there, I chummed up to a kindly old English couple. They questioned what brought me across the world to a cemetery a full day’s journey from my England lodgings. Good question. 

I sputtered and blathered as I tried to explain my love and fascination with a good necropolis when she interrupted,

“You’re a regular taphophile!” 

I thought it was an English phrasing I didn’t understand, but no, it was a real word I had yet to understand. She also taught me about being peripatetic – someone who likes to walk long distances – and I admit, there’s no place like a cemetery to walk after a long day of walking to get to the cemetery.

Taphophiles aren’t that unique, we just like sculpture, history, and most likely also walking. Cemeteries give a destination to our travels and are a respectful way to honor the history of the places we visit.

The best cemeteries I’ve visited

Père Lachaise Cemetery; Paris, France

One of the most visited cemeteries globally, Pere Lachaise, has over 70,000 burial plots, including Jim Morrison, Balzac, Chopin, Molière, Pissarro, and Oscar Wilde. The gothic graves are chillingly beautiful, as are the tourists walking to Morrison’s grave singing The Door’s songs.

Find it at Face au 21 Boulevard de Ménilmontant – 75020 Paris in the 20e Arrondissement. 

Cementiri de Montjuïc; Barcelona, Spain

A rare and bizarre find on a hill in Barcelona, this place is hands down one of the world’s best cemeteries. This 57-acre park has 150 years of statuary and burial art, including rare neo-Gothic-style mausoleums with clear partitions so you can see inside. I’m not sure why you need to see inside.

Find it at Mare de Déu del Port, Barcelona.

Lafayette No. 1, New Orleans, Louisiana

Found in the famous Garden District, this above-ground vault cemetery is known from Anne Rice’s books “The Witching Hour” and “Interview with a Vampire.” The small cemetery has about 1,100 family tombs and over 7,000 people interred. Those New Orleans summers are scorchers and the vaults act like natural crematoriums so after one year a new body can be placed on the dust of the old.

Find it at 1400 Washington Ave., New Orleans.

Key West Cemetery, Key West, Florida

If ever a cemetery could be described as hilarious, it’d be this one. Established in 1847, it’s also the home of many, many large iguanas and insane wild roosters, so proceed with caution.

The famous Hemingway bartender “Sloppy Joe” Russell is here as well as the grave of B.P. “Pearl” Roberts, which reads, “I told you I was sick.” Here are a few other tombstone epitaphs you’ll find:

• I Always Dreamed Of Owning A Small Place In Key West
• Jesus Christ, These People Are Horrible
• I’m Just Resting My Eyes
• Devoted Fan of Singer Julio Iglesias
• If You’re Reading This, You Desperately Need A Hobby (touche)

Oh, Key West, how I love you. Read about Key West here.

Saint Louis Cemetery #1, New Orleans, Louisiana

This city of the dead in the French Quarter attracts over 100,000 visitors annually. The above-ground vaults started in the 18th century and the cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Here you will find the grave of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau and see the offerings left for her and XXXs marked on the stone by visitors seeking her favor. This cemetery’s creepiest thing, though, is the huge pyramid mausoleum actor Nicholas Cage bought for himself. 

Find it at 300 N Claiborne Ave, New Orleans.

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia

My favorite of many good Savannah cemeteries. The moss hangs in blankets from the craggy old oaks in this 1846 former plantation cemetery made famous in John Berendt’s book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The famous “Bird Girl” statue was here until it had to be moved due to crowds (now in Savannah’s Telfair Museum). 

Another often-visited grave is that of  “little Gracie Watson.” Her stone chillingly memorializes her in her Easter finery after a mysterious death at just six years old.

Find it at 330 Bonaventure Road, Savannah.

Colonial Park Cemetery in downtown Savannah is also worth a stop. Here you’ll find decimated gravestones affixed to the wall forever removed from the site of their owners.

Read more about Savannah here.

Highgate Cemetery, London, England

Well known as one of the world’s best cemeteries, this burial ground for the rich and famous of the 1800s; there are many known names, along with interesting and varied memorials among the 53,000 graves. Anyone can visit the East side of this Victorian cemetery where the likes of Socialist revolutionary Karl Marx (his stone is a massive sculpture of his head), Painter Patrick Caufield, and Writer George Eliot reside, to name just a few. 

West Cemetery, however, with its winding ivy-covered paths leading up a steep wooded hill is a bit more exclusive. Admission is by guided tour only and those are far and few between. Why? Because it’s very fragile, dearly historic and in constant preservation.

It includes its own catacombs and the final resting place of English musician George Michael. Michael’s grave, however, isn’t on the tour and they won’t even confirm it’s there. I guess you gotta have Faith.  

Find it at Swain’s Lane, London.

Boston

The entire city of Boston is basically a big graveyard. Some 300 years ago, they buried revolutionaries in the middle of town, and cemeteries sprung up around them. There are dozens, and each one is worth a walkabout. Here are my two favorites.

Granary Burying Ground

Oh, just the graves of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, victims of the Boston Massacre, and Benjamin Franklin’s mother and father’s tomb. No biggie. It was established in 1660, and many of the plain stones include a “soul effigy” of a skull with wings. It symbolizes a soul flying to heaven after death. Also, eerie.

Find it at 95 Tremont St., Boston.

Forest Hills Cemetery

Many early American artists, writers, inventors, social reformers, and others are interred in this first-of-its-kind parklike and highly cultivated “garden” cemetery. Famous residents include Poets Anne Sexton and E.E. Cummings (i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)) and Playwright Eugene O’Neill.

Find it at 95 Forest Hills Avenue, Boston.

Read about Boston here.

Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery; San Juan, Puerto Rico

Called only Old San Juan Cemetery by the locals, it’s nearly impossible to get into because the hours are obscure and it can only be entered through a tunnel. That said, make an effort. It’s worth it for the photos of the almost entirely white stone statuary and bursts of color from flower bouquets along the blue ocean side. It’s among the most picturesque cemeteries you’ll find anywhere.

Find it outside the walls of Fort San Felipe del Morro fortress. 

Charter Street Cemetery/Old Burying Point; Salem, Massachusetts

Sadness and tragedy make this Salem cemetery poignant. Founded in 1637, it is among the oldest cemeteries in the United States. Home to the final resting place for many victims of the Salem Witch Trials and judges John Hathorne and Bartholomew Gedney.

Directly behind this cemetery is the Witch Trials Memorial.

Find it at Charter St, Salem, Massachusetts.

Read about Salem here.

Related books I’ve read and you should too before visiting the world’s best cemeteries:

• Ann Treneman’s Finding The Plot: 100 Graves to Visit Before You Die
• Marilyn Johnson’s The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries
• John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour and Interview with the Vampire
• Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

Read other stories about travel in these locations.

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