Ivy-covered arcades by the architect who rebuilt Zagreb, and every faith in the city buried side by side.
Mirogoj is regularly listed among the most beautiful cemeteries in Europe, and unusually for that kind of claim, it holds up.
It opened in 1876 on land bought from the philologist Ljudevit Gaj, and it was designed by Hermann Bollé — the same architect who rebuilt the cathedral and roofed St Mark’s.
The arcades
The entrance front is a 500-metre run of arcades in dressed stone, topped by a central dome and two smaller cupolas, and covered almost entirely in ivy.
Inside the arcades are the tombs of the notable — sculpture by Ivan Meštrović, Antun Augustinčić and others, in a continuous covered gallery that functions as an open-air museum of Croatian nineteenth- and twentieth-century sculpture.
The scale is deliberate and slightly absurd for a city that had about 30,000 people when it was begun. Zagreb was declaring intent.
Everyone together
The thing that makes Mirogoj genuinely unusual is that it was designed from the start as a cemetery for all faiths.
Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and Protestant sections sit together on one site, with no wall between them, along with a section for the non-religious. In a region whose twentieth century was defined by exactly the opposite principle, that is not a small thing, and it was a deliberate decision by the city in the 1870s.
You will find Cyrillic headstones next to Latin ones, Islamic markers, and a Jewish section that carries the weight of what happened to Zagreb’s community after 1941.
Who is here
Franjo Tuđman, the first president of independent Croatia, in a large tomb near the entrance.
Stjepan Radić, the Croatian Peasant Party leader shot in the Belgrade parliament in 1928.
Vladimir Prelog, Nobel laureate in chemistry. Dražen Petrović, the basketball player, whose grave is always covered in tributes. Ljudevit Gaj. Ivan Meštrović, who made many of the monuments around him.
There is a wall of the fallen from the 1990s war, and it is heavily visited.
Going
Free and open daily, with hours that shorten in winter.
Take bus 106 from the stop beside the cathedral. It takes about ten minutes.
Give it ninety minutes. Walk the arcades first, then wander — the newer sections at the back are ordinary and the interest is in the older ground.
1 November, All Saints’ Day, is extraordinary here: the whole city comes, every grave has candles, and the arcades are packed. It is also completely impractical for a casual visit, so decide which you want.
Behave as you would in any working cemetery. People are burying their families here on the day you visit.
More Landmarks
Zagreb Cathedral
The tallest building in Croatia, rebuilt after one earthquake and taken apart again after another.
St Mark's Church
The tiled roof everyone photographs, on a square you can stand in but not linger on.
Ban Jelačić Square
The main square, the meeting point under the clock, and a statue that has been turned around twice for political reasons.