8 min read
The Most Beautiful Headstones in Our Archive
We searched 117,945 headstone photos for angels, iron crosses, carved reliefs and family chapels. These are the stones that stopped us, with the people they remember.
Read the storyStories from the archive
What headstones tell us: guides to reading old stones, data stories from our archive of graves and the history of the places they stand in.
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Cholera Cemeteries: How Epidemics Moved the Dead Out of Town
Plague pits, cholera burial grounds and the laws that closed city churchyards: how the epidemics of the 19th century gave Europe its first municipal cemeteries.
7 min read
Couples Who Share a Stone: How Long One Partner Outlived the Other
We found 32,627 likely couples on shared headstones in our archive. Widows lived on a median 14 years after their husbands, and some couples died on the same day.
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The World's 10 Largest Cemeteries
Wadi al-Salam, La Almudena, Vienna Central Cemetery and Rose Hills: the world's largest cemeteries ranked by people buried and by land area, plus three with unconfirmed totals.
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The Oldest Graves in Our Archive, Checked Against the Stone
A Danish king, a Tamworth heiress, a governor's wife on Scilly: we checked every grave in our archive dated before 1700 against its photo.
9 min read
Faces on the Stones: Portraits on Headstones from Ukraine to Czechia
We looked at 1,620 headstone photos from five countries. In Ukraine 62% of the graves show the face of the dead; in Poland and Slovakia about one in eight.
7 min read
Beneath the Headstones: Cemeteries With Catacombs, Crypts and Bone Chapels
Victorian catacombs in London and Brooklyn, mummies in Palermo, painted skulls in Hallstatt, chapels of bones in Kutná Hora and Czermna, and the vault where Schiller was first laid to rest.
8 min read
How to Find the Grave of a First World War Soldier
Where to search for a WW1 grave by army, from the CWGC and the Volksbund to French, Belgian, Italian, American and Austro-Hungarian records, and what a grave reference means.
9 min read
How to Read a Jewish Gravestone: A Guide to the Matzevah
The opening letters, the father's name, the Hebrew date, the blessing hands and the Levite pitcher: what a Jewish gravestone tells you, line by line.
8 min read