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.

What you actually see

• 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.

Honest expectations

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.