Mirogoj Cemetery

Mirogoj is Zagreb's main cemetery and, more to the point, one of Hermann Bollé's best buildings. He laid it out from the 1870s as a long arcaded wall of brick and stone under green copper domes, with a colonnade running for hundreds of metres, ivy grown up the outside and cypresses and chestnuts inside. The arcades hold family tombs and sculpture by most of the Croatian sculptors of the period. It is a working cemetery for people of several faiths, arranged without separate sections, and it is used as a park as much as anything else: people walk here, and the avenues are quiet in a way the city centre never manages.

History

Mirogoj stands on land that belonged to the linguist Ljudevit Gaj and was bought by the city in 1872, after his death. Hermann Bollé designed the main buildings, and the cemetery was opened on 6 November 1876. Work on the arcades, the domes and the church at the entrance began in 1879 and, for lack of money, was finished only in 1929. Unlike Zagreb's older, church-owned cemeteries, Mirogoj belonged to the city and from the start took burials of every faith, Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and Protestant together; it now has some 60,000 graves. On 22 March 2020 an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 damaged the arcades (Wikipedia, Mirogoj Cemetery).

What you'll find

• The arcades - a long brick colonnade of family tombs under green copper domes.
• The entrance facade - the monumental front wall and central dome seen from the approach road.
• The tomb sculpture - nineteenth and twentieth-century Croatian sculpture along the galleries.
• The avenues - cypress and chestnut walks behind the arcades, quiet even at weekends.

When to go

Any season. Autumn, when the chestnuts turn and the ivy reddens, looks best. All Saints' Day at the start of November fills the place with candles and crowds and is worth seeing if you are in the city, though moving around is slow. Mornings are quiet. The gates close in the early evening and earlier in winter.

What to expect

It is a functioning cemetery with funerals taking place, so keep the camera down near mourners. The site is large and the interest is concentrated in the arcade wall; the newer sections behind are ordinary. It is uphill from the centre and the walk from the cathedral is longer than it looks on a map, with little shade near the entrance.

Nearby

The cathedral and Kaptol are downhill to the south, and the Medvednica hills rise behind.

Key facts