top five cemetery tours

Our number two of the top five cemetery tours features the must see beautiful Recoleta Cemetery Buenos Aires which is the final resting place to many of the Argentine rich and famous - including the embalmed body of Eva Duarte de Perón in the Duarte family tomb.

Recoleta is Buenos Aires ritziest and wealthiest neighborhood, with superb old mansions along the Avenida Alvear. Nowhere is this elitism better displayed than at the resting ground of the rich and famous at the Recoleta Cemetery which boosts many private ostentatious crypts and mausoleums.

Recoleta Cemetery houses for their eternal rest most of Argentina's forefathers and outstanding public celebrities as well as politicians. Its refined architecture invites us to discover its history and hidden stories at the time we marvel out of the superb aesthetic.

Recoleta Cemetery deserves its well recognized spot among the most interesting cemeteries of the world., along with those in the UK and France, Recoleta Cemetery beholds culture in its broader sense.

These beautifully crafted crypts are a testament to the national passion for death as Argentineans honor their revered not only on the day of their birth but the day of their death.

Eva Perón's grave is just one of many whose private mausoleums lie in this prestigious district's bone zone. It forms the focus for half of a three-hour walking tour of Recoleta and Retiro, the rich northern areas of the city, full of posh mansions, green squares and boutiques. Ghost stories guaranteed.

Around 100 US Dollars for a group of three. For more information please visit buenostours.com.

Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Dostoevsky, (Fyodor) Stravinsky........the beautiful gothic memorials at Tikhvin St Petersburg create an evocative site. Tikhvin Cemetery is located at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, founded by Peter the Great, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The monastery's baroque churches are magnificent.

A tour of the cemeteries can be booked as an add-on to a three-hour city tour by car or bus from the monastery, with Ost-West (007 812 327 3416, ostwest.com). From £26pp for both.

Because the city is below sea level, historically, flooding would cause the air-filled coffins to rise up from the earth. To prevent this ghoulish sight, burials are now above ground, so New Orleans's cemeteries resemble cities, with big tombs, streets and street signs - St. Louis Cemetery No.1 is the oldest and most famous. It was opened in 1789, replacing the city's older St. Peter Cemetery (no longer in existence) as the main burial ground when the city was redesigned after a fire in 1788.
The renown Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau is believed to be interred in the Glapion family crypt. Other notable New Orleanians here include Bernard de Marigny - the French-Creole playboy who brought the game of craps to the United States, Barthelemy Lafon - the architect and surveyor who allegedly became one of Jean Lafitte's pirates, and Paul Morphy, one of the earliest world champions of chess. Delphine LaLaurie is also believed to lay in rest here.

The cemetery spans just one square block, but is the resting place of over 100,000 dead.[3]

It can be dodgy at night so go on a daytime tour!

Tourneworleans.com, 10am and 1pm Mon-Sat, 10am Sun, from 334B Royal St, Royal Cafe Beignet. $15 per adult.

One of England's most picturesque graveyards, St Mary's has a striking harbour setting beside the abbey made famous in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Look for the graves of "Humpty Dumpty" - a tombstone shaped like an egg - and "Tom Thumb" - the grave of a child who drowned after falling off the harbour wall, which local kids were traditionally taken to see after church.

Tombstone Tour (March-Sept only, on demand in winter excl. Halloween), led by storyteller Harry Collett, from Whale Bone Arch, West Cliff, 8pm. Adults £4, under-14s £2. 01947 821734, users.global net.co.uk/~fcoll/. Dracula and Ghost walks of the town also available.