‘What Gets Remembered’: How Visiting a Cemetery Can Teach You About History

When planning vacation itineraries, graveyard visits may not be top of mind. But Loren Rhoads, author of the new book 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, makes the case for going out of your way to see burial grounds. “I think it adds a depth to travel that you can’t find anywhere else,” Rhoads tells TIME. “I see cemeteries as kind of open air museums full of art and history and stories and nature and wildlife, gardening… When you go to a graveyard, you see what’s important to a society, what gets remembered.” Rhoads’ book features cemeteries large (like Père Lachaise in Paris, the final resting place of notable names like Molière and Jim Morrison) to small (like George Washington’s tomb in Mount Vernon, Va.), and ancient (like Ireland’s Poulnabrone Dolmen, possibly built around 4200 B.C.) to contemporary (like Spain’s Cementerio de Fisterra, built in 2000). While it’s fun to see where famous leaders and celebrities are buried, it’s also instructive to see how ordinary people came to rest, too. Visiting your local cemetery can reveal the families who lent their names to the streets and neighborhoods in your town, and looking at their groupings and ages can bring history to life. “The 1918 flu epidemic doesn’t seem real to us, but you can see it in a graveyard where there’s stone after stone after stone of people who died in 1918,” Rhoads says. “Or [you ...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Books Source Type: news