Thousand of monuments and stories. Cemeteries are open museums.
About Cemeteries Route
Cemeteries are sacred and emotional spaces but at the same time they are witnesses of local history for cities and towns. They are common to all cities and towns in Europe and, therefore, they clearly reveal their cultural and religious identity.
Cemeteries are part of our tangible heritage, for their works, sculptures, engravings, and even for their urban planning. Likewise, cemeteries are part of our intangible heritage, of our anthropological reality, giving support to the environment surrounding the habits and practices related to death.
Both make up the funerary heritage. Cemeteries provide unique settings where to find part of our historical memories. They are places where to remember periods of local history that communities do not want and should not forget, and that we have the duty to preserve and transmit to future generations.
This Route refers to cemeteries as places of life, settings that, as urban spaces, are directly linked to the history and culture of the community they belong to and where we will find many of our references.
The significance of the European Cemeteries Route resides in its multicultural diversity, which is mainly given by the interaction among its members rather than the simple value of its individual components.