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?
Radlice and the unknown jewish cemetry
Entrance to Radlice Cemetery Photo: Miroslava Nacinova
My Prague guidebooks told me many times about Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov (Jewish Quarter), as well as two others in Zizkov district: Olsany Cemetery (Vinohradska 153, Prague 3), built for plague victims in the 1600s (and later burial place of Jan Palach, the Czechoslovak philosophy student who lit himself on fire to protest the effects of the 1968 Russian invasion), and the New Jewish Cemetery (Izraelska 1, Prague 3), where Franz Kafka now resides (as a bug!).
After living a while in Prague, I realized that a more authentic cultural experience could be found in the smaller, hidden cemeteries scattered around town.
Photo: Miroslava Nacinova
Two of my favorite cemeteries are in my own hillside neighborhood of Divci Hrady, in southwest Prague. One is Radlice Cemetery (Vymolova 38, Prague 5), nestled between fields that made up the first Bohemian bastion of feminism, Devin (“Maidens’ Castle”), where Czech maidens built a castle, trained themselves in warfare, and led attacks on Czech men. I like this cemetery for its gently sloping hill, its fresh flowers left by visitors, who might also leave candles flickering there at dusk.
Photo: Miroslava Nacinova
On All Saints Day (Nov 1) and All Souls Day (Nov 2), most cemeteries in the region are lit by the soft glow and shadows of hundreds of candles. I was enamored the first time I saw this, having seen nothing like it in the USA.
Photo: Miroslava Nacinova
About a 15 minute walk downhill from Radlice Cemetery is an unknown Jewish cemetery (U Stareho Zidovskeho hrbitova (Street), Prague 5) hidden back in the woods, overgrown with vegetation, its walls crumbling to ruins. I’d walked the dog past it dozens of times for more than a year before my girlfriend pointed it out to me, and I was wonderfully surprised at its lush eeriness… as if Jewish souls were wrapped around the trees, unlocking the Kabbalah there.
Photo: Miroslava Nacinova
The cemetery dates back to the late 1700s and it looks like something archaeologists might uncover sometime in the near future, resurrecting it from its “forgotten” status in a part of Prague that tourists never glimpse.