Is it strange, when visiting a vibrant city, to seek out the local dead? Why do cemeteries – full of old stones and ancient history - attract so many modern travelers? Momondo asked our city bloggers to unearth an explanation and give us the low-down on the neighborhood necropolis. You'll read about the best burials in Berlin, the most entertaining interments in Prague, the graves of American heroes in New York and a cemetery with a magnificant view of Istanbul plus tips on what JP Sartre likes on his Paris grave and about Soeren Kierkegaard's and Karl Marx's last resting places in Copenhagen and London. Are you ready to go beneath the surface?

Assistens cemetery 

Discovering this place on my doorstep was like waking up to find your pet dog has had puppies under your bed.

OK, it’s a cemetery but it’s beautiful in a peculiarly understated way.

Photo by Chat_K

You can wander round it every day and never take the same route twice. It’s a sprawling maze of a place with dozens of nooks and crannies where you can lounge around in the summer and catch a few rays. People treat it more or less as a public park so don’t be too perturbed by the sight of a few bikini-clad girls soaking up the sun. Not that that’s why I like it so much you understand.

It was originally conceived as an overspill for the crowded central cemetery but word of its attractiveness quickly spread. It rapidly became the place to be buried - something evidenced by the eternal presence of no less a personage as Hans Christian Andersen.

Photo by David Christiansen

Soren Kierkegaard’s (Kierkegaard actually means cemetery in Danish) last resting place (left) can also be found here. It’s the nearest thing Denmark has to Jim Morrison’s grave in Pere Lachaise, Paris, and there’s almost always a few straggly-haired philosophy students hanging around.

Photo by Double Feature

A lot of people use it as a shortcut to Noerrebrogade from Jagtvej or vice versa but most simply come and take a leisurely stroll and enjoy their surroundings.

You quite often see groups gathered round a grave, raising a beer to someone recently departed. Typically of the Danes, they don’t crow about their city’s attractions that much but this really is one of Copenhagen’s hidden gems.