Olsanské hrbitovy, Prague, Czech Republic - Worldwide Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

At the Olsany cemeteries, Prague's largest, there are more than one million people buried. The first bodies were buried here during the first great plague epidemic in 1680, when small, parochial graveyards inside the city couldn't hold the thirty thousand dead that needed to be buried over a period of several weeks. At this time, the old town magistrate allowed a chapel to be built in the first cemetery to honour the patron saints against the plague - St. Rochus, St Sebastian and St. Rosalie. More plague victims were buried on the lands of the one-time village of Wolsany in 1713 - 14, and another epidemic in the winter of 1772 again filled the muddy roads from Prague to Olsany with carts carrying the bodies of its victims for burial.

In 1787, Olsany, became the central graveyard of the city of Prague due to a decree issued by Emperor Joseph II - who was concerned with the hygenic means of burial - banning the burial of bodies in cemeteries with the city limits. The Emperor was so thorough that he also ordered the emptying of crypts in the city and for the remains to be moved to graveyards outside the walls of Prague. So the little romantic graveyards around the churches and chapels of Prague, which imbued the city with a certain poetic magic, vanished. Residents of the right bank of the Vltava at the time buried their dead at Olsany, while those on the left bank made use of the Malostrana (Lesser Quarter) cemetery at Kosire. At that time, funerals were also big events and the cemetery continuously expanded, to an area of 50 hectares, becoming the final resting place of many distinguished men and women of the Czech nation.

The cemetery is divided into ten parts, numbered according to their age. The oldest section of the cemetery - the First Cemetery, originally a plague burial ground - was closed, though its presence is still brought to mind by the Chapel of St. Rochus. 1787 saw the founding of the Second Cemetery, which is the resting place of, among others, the poet and journalist Karel Havlicek Borovsky. Havlicek died shortly after his return from exile in Bressanone at the age of 35 and was buried next to his wife, who didn't live to see his return to Prague.

A mere eight years later, the Third Cemetery was established, where the grave of revivalist and philologist Josef Jungmann can be found. In 1841, the Fourth Cemetery was opened at Olsany, and this section contains the grave of Jan Neruda's greta love, the writer Karolina Svetla, along with her husband Petr Muzak. Their tombstone is a copy of the original, which was damaged by vandals, as many others have been. After another 20 years, the Fifth Cemetery was opened, at which are buried many of the artists and famous persons of the time.

The graves in the Second through Fifth cemeteries are now covered with ivy and the tombstones of the richest families are notable for their artwork, but are also the most threatened by time and vandals. Elaborate tombstones bring to mind several generations of famous sculptors, and older parts of the cemetery are actually open-air galleries in which it's possible to admire unique funeral art.

The Sixth and Seventh Cemeteries were founded in 1885, and the the Eighth and Ninth, where martyred student Jan Palach (whose remains were moved by the state in 1973 to Vsetaty, and back in 1990) is buried, were opened four years later. In 1896, the cemetery was expanded by another section with the opening of the First Municipal Cemetery, where visitors come to honour the memories of the founders of the Osvobozeny Theater, Jan Werich and Jiri Voskovec, as well as the composer inseparably connected to the theater, Jaroslav Jezek. Those who want to see the final resting place of the writer Franz Kafka, only have to cross the street which divides the First Municipal Cemetery from the New Jewish.

City, Town, or Parish / State / Country: Not listed Approximate number of graves: Not listed Cemetery Status: Active Cemetery Website: Not listed

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