Vienna Central Cemetery

The Zentralfriedhof opened in 1874 on land outside the city, and it is enormous - about two and a half square kilometres holding well over three million burials, more than the living population of Vienna, with internal roads, its own bus route and a scale that means walking between sections takes real time. The Ehrengräber, graves of honour, were an early marketing device to make the remote new cemetery acceptable: Beethoven and Schubert were moved here, and Brahms, Johann Strauss, Schoenberg, Salieri and later Falco were buried among them, with a Mozart memorial standing where no grave exists since his burial place is unknown. There are separate Jewish, Protestant, Orthodox and Muslim sections; the old Jewish part, damaged in 1938 and after, is deliberately left semi-wild.

What you actually see

• The graves of honour - Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss and Schoenberg together.
• A cemetery with a bus route - two and a half square kilometres of grounds.
• The old Jewish section - overgrown by design after the damage of 1938.
• The Art Nouveau church - Max Hegele's St Charles Borromeo at the centre.

When to go

All year; autumn for the atmosphere, 1 November for All Saints. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Distances are long - take the internal bus or a bicycle. Sections close at different hours by season. It is a working cemetery with funerals in progress; behave accordingly.

Nearby

Simmering and the Gasometer buildings are close; central Vienna is twenty minutes by tram.