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

The Jewish Cemetery in Josefov                                                                             Photo: Megatick

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, 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, 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.

Two of my favorite cemeteries are in my own hillside neighborhood of Divci Hrady, in southwest Prague.