199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die

Description

A hauntingly beautiful travel guide to the world's most visited cemeteries, told through spectacular photography and their unique histories and residents. More than 3.5 million tourists flock to Paris's Pere Lachaise cemetery each year. They are lured there, and to many cemeteries around the world, by a combination of natural beauty, ornate tombstones and crypts, notable residents, vivid history, and even wildlife. Many also visit Mount Koya cemetery in Japan, where 10,000 lanterns illuminate the forest setting, or graveside in Oaxaca, Mexico to witness Day of the Dead fiestas. Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery has gorgeous night tours of the Southern Gothic tombstones under moss-covered trees that is one of the most popular draws of the city. 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die features these unforgettable cemeteries, along with 196 more, seen in more than 300 photographs. In this bucket list of travel musts, author Loren Rhoads, who hosts the popular Cemetery Travel blog, details the history and features that make each destination unique. Throughout will be profiles of famous people buried there, striking memorials by noted artists, and unusual elements, such as the hand carved wood grave markers in the Merry Cemetery in Romania.

Loren Rhoads is the author of Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel, Morbid Curiosity Cures and the Blues, and the editor of Death's Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries. She is the monthly cemetery columnist at Gothic Beauty and wrote about cemetery travel for almost five years at Gothic Net. She has served as a cemetery consultant for Travel & Leisure, The Weather Channel, Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, the Horror Writers Association, the Death Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and more. Her well-trafficked blog, Cemetery Travel, details her first-hand visits. She lives in San Francisco.