199 Cemeteries To See Before You Die

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 Pÿ 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.

A hauntingly beautiful travel guide to the world's most visited cemeteries, told through spectacular photography andtheir unique histories and residents. More than 3.5 million tourists flock to Paris's Pè 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.

Certain symbols abound in modern Western culture that are instantly recognizable: the cross signifies Christianity, the six-pointed Star of David is revered by Jews, the golden arches frequently means it's time for lunch. Other symbols, however, require a bit of decoding-particularly those found in cemeteries. Cemeteries are virtual encyclopedias of symbolism. Engravings on tombstones, mausoleums and memorials tell us just about everything there is to know about a person- date of birth and death as well as religion, ethnicity, occupation, community interests, and much more. In the fascinating new book Stories in Stone: The Complete Guide to Cemetery Symbolism by noted author Douglas Keister, the secrets of cemetery symbolism are finally revealed. For instance, did you know that it is quite rare to see a sunflower on a tombstone? Did you know that the human foot symbolizes humility and service since it consistently touches the earth? Or the humble sheaf of wheat-while it is often used to denote someone who has lived a long and fruitful life, do you know other meanings it might carry? Stories in Stone provides history along with images of a wide variety of common and not-so-common cemetery symbols, and offers an in-depth examination of stone relics and the personal and intimate details they display-flora and fauna, religious icons, society symbols, and final impressions of how the deceased wished to be remembered. Douglas Keister has created a practical field guide that is compact and portable, perfect for those interested in family histories and genealogical research, and is the only book of its kind that unlocks the language of symbols in a comprehensive and easy-to-understand manner. Douglas Keister has photographed fourteen award-winning, critically acclaimed books (including Red Tile Style: America's Spanish Revival Architecture, The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Home, and Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties) earning him the title "America's most noted photographer of historic architecture." He also writes and illustrates magazine articles and contributes photographs and essays to other books, calendars, posters, and greeting cards. Doug lives in Chico, California, and travels frequently to photograph and lecture on historic architecture and photography.

Nearly every tourist destination has a graveyard. Over the past two and a half decades, Loren Rhoads has visited literally hundreds of graveyards. She's traveled to London's Highgate Cemetery, strolled through the Paris Catacombs, seen Hollywood Forever pulled back from the brink of destruction, studied Native American graveyards in Michigan, explored a circuit minister¿s churchyard on Maui, delved into the Protestant Cemetery of Rome and Zoshigaya Reien in Tokyo, and made stops in Venice, Boston, Los Angeles, Hiroshima, Yosemite, Sleepy Hollow, Gettysburg, and New Orleans along the way. Come along on her adventures in cemeteries around the world.

A collection of photographs from the burial grounds of Europe explores the beauty of cemeteries and the emotions the survivors of the dead placed into the making of the tombs.

The dead of Paris, before the French Revolution, were most often consigned to mass graveyards that contemporaries described as terrible and terrifying, emitting "putrid miasmas" that were a threat to both health and dignity. In a book that is at once wonderfully macabre and exceptionally informative, Erin-Marie Legacey explores how a new burial culture emerged in Paris as a result of both revolutionary fervor and public health concerns, resulting in the construction of park-like cemeteries on the outskirts of the city and a vast underground ossuary. Making Space for the Dead describes how revolutionaries placed the dead at the center of their republican project of radical reinvention of French society and envisioned a future where graveyards would do more than safely contain human remains; they would serve to educate and inspire the living. Legacey unearths the unexpectedly lively process by which burial sites were reimagined, built, and used, focusing on three of the most important of these new spaces: the Paris Catacombs, Père Lachaise cemetery, and the short-lived Museum of French Monuments. By situating discussions of death and memory in the nation's broader cultural and political context, as well as highlighting how ordinary Parisians understood and experienced these sites, she shows how the treatment of the dead became central to the reconstruction of Parisian society after the Revolution.

Provides information on cemetery research covering such topics as locating graves and cemeteries, accessing death records, searching a cemetery, and American burial customs.

Sacred Ground is a sumptuous photographic portrait of New Orleans's legendary cemeteries. Robert S. Brantley celebrates the otherworldly landscapes, intricate ironwork, evocative memorials, and stately monuments as vibrant sites of remembrance. New Orleans history is further revealed through biographies of twenty individuals whose grave sites are among those featured, including entrepreneurs, celebrated musicians, a world-class violin maker, an ex-slave turned minister, a ship's captain, and a young soldier felled by Spanish flu while in basic training for World War I. The rich duotone photographs, organized by cemetery, are followed by an index identifying the tombs and their iconography; an introduction by S. Frederick Starr provides background on New Orleans cemetery history, culture, and burial customs. Sacred Ground provides a stunning exploration of the traditions born of New Orleans's unique religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity.