Spend a day with the dead.

“Tombstone tourism” is on the rise. Cemeteries, those places most of us strive to stay out of, are once again popular tourist destinations. Part of the reason is that cemeteries, and historic cemeteries in particular, have become more “tourist-friendly.” The best of them have free guide maps, an information booth at the entrance, and there’s sure to be a refreshment stall at the main gates. Immerse yourself in local history, enjoy nature and get within six feet of some famous people. Best of all, admission is always free.

It’s easy to forget that cemeteries were made for the living.

Where first we come in sorrow we often return again for something else. We discover that places of eternal rest have many moods and designs, from the peaceful, almost romantic air of Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with its cobbled avenues that have their own street names, to the fields of infinite sacrifice at Arlington National Cemetery. Yet in whichever idiosyncratic precinct we linger awhile, we sense the dead watching and taking our measure as well, keeping us company as much as we are keeping company with them. People today have become too transient, unsentimental, agnostic and forgetful to spend much time in graveyards, which is a shame as a visit can put them back touch with history, back in touch with their ancestors. It can be reflective, restorative, even rejuvenating.

With views to die for, Waverley Cemetery is perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, surrounded on three sides by some of the most expensive real estate in Sydney. It is the last resting place of several important Australian literary and po…

With views to die for, Waverley Cemetery is perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, surrounded on three sides by some of the most expensive real estate in Sydney. It is the last resting place of several important Australian literary and political figures from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Go Gujarat!

I made a trip to India a couple of years ago to collect the material I needed to write about one of the burial precincts in Great Burial Places - the European cemeteries at Surat in Gujarat State. I then hired a car and driver and spent three weeks travelling around Gujarat, a part of India that tourists rarely visit. Of the 800+ princely states that I wrote about in A History of the Indian Princely States, now available as an e-book on this website, over 350 were located in Gujarat.

In most places I stayed in the palaces of the erstwhile maharajas, which are now boutique hotels. Gujarat is packed with history and fascinating places, the people are friendly (they don’t see many foreigners), the festivals are mind-blowing explosions of noise and colour, the food is great and everything is amazingly inexpensive. If you want a great travel experience off the beaten track and without fellow travellers, try Gujarat.

Down Shoestring Road.

I first visited many of the tomb precincts mentioned in Great Burial Places with John Allen, a friend whom I went through high school with. Our first adventure, after we had just finished college in 1964, was to hitch-hike overland from Mumbai to London. We were six months on the road. After a working holiday in London we hitched back overland to Singapore and flew home to Australia from there. John has now resurrected his old travel diaries and photo collection and written two illustrated blogs called Shoestring Road (www.ozac.travellerspoint.com/) and Back Down Shoestring Road (www.ozac3.travellerspoint.com/). Check them out.

The Qing tombs.

The buildings, sculptures and interior decoration of the Ming Tombs in Beijing are the highlights of 5,000 years of Chinese burial practice. They contain the best elements of the culture of Central and North China. However, the following dynasty, the Qing (1644-1912), also left magnificent imperial mausoleums. They are significant examples of the architecture and culture of the Manchus, a nomadic tribe from Northeast China which overthrew the Ming dynasty.

There are two main groups, the Eastern Qing Tombs and the Western Qing Tombs. The Eastern Qing Tombs are located at Zunhua, 125 kilometres northeast of Beijing. They are the largest, most complete and best preserved extant mausoleum complex in China. The Western Qing Tombs are located some 140 kilometers southwest of Beijing in Yi County, Hebei Province.

There are four royal mausoleums which are the last resting places of four emperors along with their empresses, imperial concubines, princes and princesses. Because both groups of tombs are located far from Bejiing they are not often visited by foreigners, which is in itself a good reason to go.

Another great burial precinct in Kolkata.

History buffs visiting Kolkata can find many historic graves outside the South Park Street Cemetery. The city’s original churches and their graveyards, notably St. John’s churchyard, are the last resting places of the city’s pioneers, including Job Charnock, who founded Calcutta in 1690.

Another great burial precinct in London.

Westminster Abbey is not the only great burial place in London. Taphophiles should check out Highgate Cemetery, a huge forested precinct in north London that is the last resting place of many illustrious people, notably Michael Faraday, George Eliot, Malcolm McLaren, Diane Cilento and that famous socio-economic ideologue Karl Marx.

Another great burial precinct in Paris.

Space and content balance meant that in Great Burial Places I could only cover three sites in Paris: Père Lachaise Cemetery, the Pantheon and the Catacombs. But there is one more burial precinct that is well worth a visit. The Basilica of Saint Denis, a beautiful Romanesque abbey church in the north of Paris, was the last resting place of all but three of the kings of France. It was ransacked during the French Revolution and all the bodies buried there were dug up and destroyed, but the building is a magnificent example of medieval French architecture and there have been several royal burials and transfers of royal remains from elsewhere since the Revolution.

The father of Egyptology

One of the people mentioned in Great Burial Places as being interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is Jean-Francois Champollion, the genius who cracked the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic code. He was an arrogant and brilliant child of the French Revolution who made loyal friends and bitter enemies and was most of the time at odds with the Church and much of the Establishment. I have just come across an entertaining and authoritative biography of him by Andrew Robinson called Cracking the Egyptian Code. The revolutionary life of Jean-Francois Champollion (Oxford University Press). A great read.