Olšany Cemetery.

I spent most of my afternoon at a cemetery. Sounds morbid, but you haven't seen this place. When I say it is huge, I mean...you walk for three hours and never see the same gravestone twice and you never walk the same path and you never find the end kind of huge...  Olšany is another place that I wanted to see when I was here before, but never made it.

“This cemetery was founded when a plague epidemic struck Prague at the end of the 17th century. It was too dangerous to bury plague victims in the middle of the city, beside their local church, as was custom. The king ordered Prague councillors to buy a patch of land outside the city walls. So they bought this ground here in Olsany, which was at the time outside of Prague, and they started to bury plague victims out here. And as time went on and Prague grew bigger, it was no longer just plague victims who were buried out here, but normal inhabitants of the new town as well.”


Dating back to the 1600's, the 45 acre cemetery is thought to hold over 2 million bodies, it is immense.  On the metro ride over I kept thinking that I would be overwhelmed by the immensity of death.  A place so large must be depressing, right?  Strangely, I felt the opposite.  I saw old women and young grandsons laying flowers as they laughed about old stories and memories -- when they left, I took a peek.  They were laying flowers on a grave of a relative who dies in 1821.  One hundred and ninety-one years later, someone was still remembered, they were still cherished.  It was beautiful.

Most of the gravestones were covered in vines and leaves, some having completely fallen apart or caved in.  Nevertheless, it was a lot to take in.  Jake, Devon and I have decided we want to be buried there.