Typically hillside location of Chinese cemetery, giving the souls of the dead a good view. Hong, Kong. Photo from train to airport by Angela Lansbury.
An increasing number of people are researching their own ancestors as well as looking for famous graves.
Problem
How do you visit graveyards, find a grave and explore the background stories?
Answers
Take a cemetery walking tour. Find graves of famous people on Find-a-grave website.
Stories
America - see USA at end
Gravestones, Graveyards and memorials by Country
Australia
WWII see Museum at Canberra. I was struck by the story of the donkey/horse in WWI.
Memorial behind museum. Paintings of graveyards and processions haunted by ghostly skeletons of the write dead.
Main processions on Anzac day.
Austria
Mozart and musicians in Vienna.
Belgium
Battlefield tours. Menin gate with names of the dead and annual ceremony and last post played.
Cambodia's Buddhas
Lots of Buddhas. I agreed to meet the driver of our tuk-tuk (motorcycle-drawn taxi) beside a Buddha. Unfortunately the temple had two or more exits and each had a Buddha. I did a frantic 20 minute run anti-clockwise around the temple enclosure wall perimeter before finding our buddha and our tuk-tuk driver.
Another Buddha. Not my Buddha, and not my tok-tuk driver, either! Photo by Angela Lansbury.
Cambodia's Killing Fields Museum
Memorials with photos in museum, contains bones, skulls and photos, in the Capital city, Pnonh Penn, and the second city and main tourist area, Siem Reap, which is near Ankor Wat (w a t means temple).
Canada
I was looking for the gravestones of famous writers, L M Montgomery of the House of Green Gables in Newfoundland, WWI poet McCrae, and Titanic memorials. Not a lot to see. Look online.
China
Burials take place on hillsides. Monuments and museums to famous leaders such as Sun Yat Sen.
The terracotta warriors in Xian.
Sun nat sen mausoleum, Nanjing.
Czech Republic
Prague: Wall of names of Holocaust victims which you see on the Jewish tour circuit covering synagogues, organised tours or multiple tickets. Ancient graveyard with gravestone piled up or tilted including creator of the Golem. Guide will tell you about symbols, Cohens (priests), Levis, praying hands,lamps, animals such as deer/harts for the twelve tribes. (Also see Kafka Museum and learn about his life and death.)
Egypt
El Alamein.
I researched this, looking for the monument with for the name of my late mother's first husband who died in WWII. (I found the death notice in the deed box after she died. She needed to keep it to prove she was w widow in order to get remarried.) She remarried and I am the child of her second husband.
You can see pictures of the large cemetery and memorials on line.
France
Tomb of unknown soldier.
Paris Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Pere is French for father, in this case not a blood relative but a priest.
See graves of: Edith Piaf; Jim Morrison; Oscar Wilde; Proust, legendary lovers Heloise and Abelard; and others.
Normandy WWI and WWII graveyards to different nations such as the Australians.
Proust's grave.
Germany
Bergen-Belsen, memorial to Anne Frank and her sister.
Mendelssohn.
Greece
T h e s s a l o n i k a.
A short trip from the second city, Thessaloniki, brings you to the grave of Alexander the Great's son Philip, who killed (or had killed) his father in the nearby theatre, at the marriage of his father. Alexander took a second young wife and announced in front of that his already pregnant wife's son would be his successor (not Philip).
Tomb of political leader (who wrote the Greek national anthem), on island of Cephalonia also spelled Kefalonia. I went there on a press tour.
Hong Kong
Cemetery on a hillside seen on train to the airport. Right hand window if you are facing forward. Graves in China are places on hilltops and hillsides near the top to give the soul a good view.
India
Taj Mahal, Agra. Moslem memorial to beloved wife who had numerous children and died during or after childbirth.
Driving south from Delhi towards Agra we passed a Jewish synagogue. We stopped and after much negotiating persuaded the curator to open the door and show us around the small synagogue.
Behind it was a cemetery where a group of presumably non Jewish Indians were camping in a permanent shack. Apparently they are allowed to stay there because they presence guards against vandals.
Cremation is the rule so not so many graveyards of famous Indians.
Memorials and museums for the Gandhis.
British Wartime cemeteries?
I saw cremations on the riverbank and bodies floating in the river at Benares, now called Varanasi.
Israel
Tombs of Jesus and patriarchs. Numerous battlefield from biblical times (Christians search for Old Testament). Holy land tours will feature Christian sites. Jewish tours will concentrate on the Bible and modern Israel such as Kibbutzim.
Italy
Rome, Pantheon: burial place of Italian kings and others.
Catacombs under the city from Roman times.
Assisi and Umbria
Saint Francis of Assisi's birthplace and burial place in Assissi, huge place of pilgrimage in Assisi, plus numerous places he visited around Umbria.
L u c c a
Monument to opera composer Puccini, outside his house which is a museum. I visited this on a press trip. His statue shows him with a cigar in his mouth. Cancer is what killed him.
Puccini's House, Lucca, Italy.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g187898-d195713-r130187871-Puccini_Museum_Casa_natale-Lucca_Province_of_Lucca_Tuscany.html
Myanmar (Previously called Burma)
Martyrs' Mausoleum in Yangon, honours Aung San father of the nation, and father of Aung San Suu Kyi, plus other martyrs.
Mexico
Trotsky
(How can you remember the English spelling of his name? Trotsky is TROTting through the SKY.)
Monument behind his former home where he was killed by an assassin. The home is now a museum.
New Zealand
Anzac Day.
Portugal
Pet cemetery, Lisbon Zoo.
Catacombs, Porto.
Romania
The Merry Cemetery.
Russia
Moscow, Lenin's tomb in Red Square.
The Shirokorechenskoe Cemetery, on the southwestern outskirts of Yekaterinburg, in Russia, has graves of scientists, and heroes of World War II. Graves are decorated with sculptures, including reliefs, gem-embedded headstones and laser engravings of the departed on granite. Yekaterinburg is also spelled Ekaterinburg.
Scotland
Edinburgh
Statue of the dog which supposedly sat on it's master's grave. (But maybe just came to the cemetery because the curator fed it.)
Lockerbie cemetery has a large memorial with names of the lost as well as many individual graves and stories. Worth a visit.
Singapore
Cemeteries have been moved to make way for housing developments.
Walking tour of Bukit Brown cemetery. (Bukit means hill, in Malay language.)
South Africa
Paul Kruger's grave.
Spain
Madrid
Monument to the dead.
Turkey
Ataturk Mausoleum, Ankara.
Gallipoli.
Mausoleum of Mausolus, which gives us the word Mausoleum.
UK
London:
Westminster Abbey, poets' corner.
St Paul's: Famous plaque in St Paul's cathedral was put up to honour the architect Sir Christopher Wren, words chosen by his son said: if you want to see my monument, look around you. (Just in case English is not your first language and the meaning is not clear, the son meant the entire building is a monument to the genius of his father.)
Highgate Cemetery:
Graves of:
Karl Marx, Highgate Cemetery. Tours.
Kensal Green cemetery. You see it from the train window. I tried walking around it but the graves are pretty spaced out. Look on line first.
Yorkshire
Brontes.
Jane Austen.
USA
Washington DC.
Arlington Cemetery. Major presidents have their own memorials, such as Lincoln and Jefferson.
Virginia
Mausoleum of leader of the south, Robert E Lee, and his horse, Traveller.
Lee Chapel, Campus of Lee, Virginia.
New Orleans
Cemetery. I went on a tour and heard how the procession to the cemetery would be accompanies by jazz musicians. I was sad to see that the cemetery tours stopped, I think after Katrina flooding. Maybe tours have started again. Check for up to date information.
Los Angeles
Al Jolson statue of him kneeling.
Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California, USA.
Marilyn Monroe: disappointing, nothing to see.
Wild West
Tours around the areas take you to graves of legends. Various amusing graves. Look online.
Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam. Incidentally, the name Minh in very popular. Two members of a Vietnam Toastmasters club which I visit in Singapore are called Minh. Hanoi is the capital.
Confusingly, the largest city is called Ho Chi Minh city. But the Ho Chi Minh memorial is in the other city, the capital.
Wales
Numerous sites connected with homes of Dylan Thomas.
Websites
BBC
Find a Grave
"A brothel is the best place for a writer to live. Quiet in the daytime and noisy at night." (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Also see country and city tourist board websites.
Some unusual gravestones:
A sundial on a gravestone in Kilbirnie, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilbirnie_Auld_Kirk#/media/File:Sundial_on_Gravestone_at_Kilbirnie.JPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(horse)
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g187898-d195713-r130187871-Puccini_Museum_Casa_natale-Lucca_Province_of_Lucca_Tuscany.html Puccini's House, Lucca, Italy.
See Wikipedia article on Mausoleums.
BBC article entitled Find The Plot:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39480595
Museums in some cities are free on:
18 April (International Monument Day)
- 18 May (International Museum Day)
- 5 June (International Environment Day)
- the last weekend of September (European Heritage Days)
- 27 September (World Tourism Day)
Read more: http://www.inthessaloniki.com/en/archaelogical-museum-of-thessaloniki#ixzz4gPRPAkxR
See my previous post on the Merry Cemetery of Romania.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share my posts.
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