This is wonderful. I am completely obsessed by visiting graveyards and am glad to see that a few of the ones I love are featured in this book. It has beautiful photographs of each site and a short history with highlights of each place to explain why the author chose it. There are sites here from all around the world and it has made me want to go to each and every place. It's splendid.

I inherited my Nan’s fascination for cemeteries. She instilled in me a reverence for the people whose tombstones I was reading. Horror movies gave me my dread/hope that one day I’ll witness a hand rising from a grave or hear some grave bells ringing.

This book introduces you to a selection of beautiful cemeteries from around the world. For some, their beauty lies in their location, overlooking the ocean or surrounded by trees. Some hold unique cultural or historical significance. Many are the final resting place of people who found fame in life.

Each entry includes the history of the cemetery and photos that made me want to visit most of them, but there are also tales of the horror of being buried alive and bodysnatching. If you know me, you know I love fun facts. This book has plenty. Some of my favourites are:

The headstone of Susan B. Anthony is covered with plexiglass around election time because there’s a tradition of people placing their ‘I Voted’ stickers on it.

The Sophie Calle installation at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York is a “twenty-five-year artwork entitled Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery in which people can write down their thoughts or secrets and place them in a white marble ‘tombstone’.”

During summer, movies screenings are held on the Douglas Fairbanks Lawn at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. Movies shown there include Night of the Living Dead.

Amongst the tombstones in Okunoin Cemetery, Mount Kōya, Japan, you’ll see some more unusual memorials: “a giant termite’s nest that acts as a pest control company’s memorial to all the termites their products have exterminated. Puffer fish that have fallen foul of chefs’ knives, a giant coffee cup, a large space rocket erected by aerospace company ShinMaywa Industries and memorials to the staff of companies such as Nissan, Toyota and Kirin beer all form part of the curious mix.”

If you’re superstitious, you may want to avoid this cemetery all together.

“Nearby, housed in a small wooden cage near the Gobyobashi Bridge, the equally curious Miroku Stone supposedly weighs one’s sins as you try to lift it from a lower to an upper platform, but more scary is the Sugatami-no-Ido, or Well of Reflections, found just beyond the Nakanohashi Bridge, close to the shrine to the bodhisattva Asekaki Jizo. Legend has it that if you look into this tiny wooden well but don’t see your reflection, you’re fated to die within three years. Probably best to stay on the safe side and avoid it - which might also be good advice for the Zenni Jochi stone memorial to a Buddhist nun of which it is said, if you place your ear you can hear the cries of people in Hell.”

Naturally, this is the cemetery I most want to explore.

I found the section at the end of the book that explored symbolism in cemeteries particularly interesting.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Frances Lincoln, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group, for the opportunity to read this book.

You know I love a beautiful (and yes, creepy) cemetery, history, photography, and travel – so this one has it all. This gem of a book takes a deep dive into the worlds most beautiful cemeteries, from the above ground tombs of New Orleans, to Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery, to Hollywood, to the deserts of Texas and back. Then head on outside of the Americas and visit everywhere from Romania, to Prague, to Rome, and more. Some of my personal favorites: Glendalough Graveyard in County Wicklow, Ireland, established in the 12th century, St. Mary’s in Yorkshire that looks as if a Jane Austen romance should be taking place amidst the headstones; and Pere Lachaise in Paris. This one will have you booking a flight ASAP. I could not get enough!

This book taught me a new word to describe myself: <i>taphophile</i>. It's an inspiration - a travel guide even - for goths like me, who try to visit as many historical cemeteries during each city vacation as humanly possible and take cute pictures of their favourite headstones. Yes, we have favourites.

Zappaterra provides plenty of background information for each of those sites (though of course limited to only a few examples per country), explaining the politics and reasoning behind many a final resting place's location. Could the text be a bit more detailled? Of course. But you only have this much room for minute descriptions when there are so many beautifully macabre photos to put in your coffee table book.

I was actually surprised how many of the European cemeteries listed in <i>Cities of the Dead</i> I have already seen - but plenty remain to be explored. (black heart eyes)

I love cemeteries. I grew up next to one and love visiting cemeteries when I travel. I really enjoyed flipping through this book taking me through cemeteries around the world. The book is divided into the Americas, Europe, and the rest of the world. It highlights predominant cemeteries providing a page or two of text with the history of the cemetery or something unique about its architecture as well as full color photographs. I loved the photos and seeing how the styles varied by country. I do think the organization of the book was a bit haphazard. It needed to either be divided into smaller geographic regions or move from country to country in a more logical pattern. The highlight of the book was definitely the photographs. Some were absolutely stunning while other seemed to be generic stock photos. I was happy that they included pictures from various seasons and times of day. This book added to my list of cemeteries I need to visit, but I don't necessarily need to own a copy of the book.

I love cemeteries and visiting graves of famous people. This book focuses on cemeteries with sections broken into The Americas, Europe, and the rest called Asia, Oceania & Africa. This is a photo book where each cemetery is given one to two pages of history, location, uniqueness and mentions if famous people buried there. I’ve been to many featured. And others I’ve been to the cities but not thought to visit their cemeteries. For example, I never thought about visiting a cemetery in Venice.

The photos are all in color and I love that they feature different seasons. A few favorite shots were with lantern or candle lit headstones. But the photos are stock images and while some are stunning others are only average. It is interesting to see graves in different locations like islands or other cultures where traditions are different.

I would have preferred if North America had it’s own section as it is odd to have four eastern USA cemeteries, than jump to Brazil then back to Illinois than Puerto Rico and back to the USA etc. If felt random in layout. It might have been better to either go north to south or the opposite. The same could probably be said for breaking Europe from England. Also the selection of cemeteries featured seems haphazard. Of course there are historic ones like the Jewish cemetery in Budapest but a few I wasn’t sure why they made the list to be included.

This is a book I would checkout from a library but wouldn’t need to own. There also wasn’t any mention if cemeteries were open to the public, free or pay a for a charge enter. It is an interesting book and I enjoyed looking through the pages and reading about individual cemeteries. Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group - White Lion for a temporary ARC in exchange for an honest review. (3.5 stars)

As an avid cemetery walker, I had to read this book and gather ideas about potential cemeteries to visit. This book was full of beautiful pictures of grave markers and landscapes. Some of the cemeteries I've had the fortune of visiting in the past, and the book describes them well. I was a little disappointed as a Canadian to see that we only merited one entry in the book, when we have lots of interesting and historical cemeteries here to explore. The one chosen (Mt Pleasant) is a wonderful place to walk, but Toronto has several other beautiful cemeteries, as does Ottawa, Kingston or many other places in Ontario. It would have been nice to see other provinces highlighted as well. This book focuses on America in it's North American section too heavily, so I don't know if the other areas of the world are equally uneven in their coverage. The cemeteries have beautiful pictures, and helpful descriptions; I just wish there the coverage of cemeteries was a bit more even.

Cemeteries speak volumes. They teach us about tradition, culture, religion, architecture, history and even politics. They memorialize the dead and also honour the living. Burial sites can be humble wood crosses, stone slabs, ostentatious shrines flaunting wealth or luxurious marble mausoleums riddled with sculptures. They can be crowded, up to twelve people deep with slabs jammed every which way to fit; isolated, spread out in expansive woodlands and gardens; or laid out with perfect precision such as those honouring soldiers. Author and taphophile Yolanda Zappaterra explores her favourites and details them in words and remarkable photography. She also includes a helpful glossary of symbolism in cemeteries.

Burial sites include prehistoric necropoli, ancient tombs (Absolom's Tomb in the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem), white crosses honouring soldiers (Verdun Memorial in France, for example), evocative crowded Jewish cemetery in Prague (one of the most moving I've seen), Okopowa Jewish Cemetery in Poland, esthetically beautiful Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans, peaceful and magnificently landscaped Bonaventure Cemetery in Georgia (America) with its stellar statuary, stacked "lockers" in Rio de Janeiro, Santa Maria's stunning sea location in Puerto Rico, Glendalough Graveyard in Ireland with its achingly pretty landscape, Highgate in England where greats like Karl Marx and George Eliot are buried and the architecturally modern Gubbio Cemetery in Italy.

My favourite cemeteries around the world are numerous (I've been to several in this book) but include ancient virtually unknown Roman necropoli, tiny atmospheric medieval church yards dripping with mosses and twisty pathways and those in woodland areas. So many in this book intrigue me but especially City of the Dead in Russia and Issyk-Kul Cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan which I did not know existed. I have added others to my list to wander on my travels.

Whether you are a fellow taphophile or simply wish to learn more about peoples through cemeteries, this book should not be missed.

My sincere thank you to Quarto Publishing Group - White Lion and NetGalley for the privilege of learning more about cities of the dead in general. Truly inspirational!

I've been to my share of cemeteries over the years, locally and internationally; military and civilian; famous and off the beaten path. This book brings many of those to mind, and inspires me to visit some new ones.

(That sounds a little bit macabre, or maybe moribund, doesn't it? Well, Halloween is coming up in a month and a half? LOL. Or I'm just primed to read some more of Jaime Jo Wright's books, haha. The latter is certainly the case after this read.)

The book is beautifully presented, with scads of pictures and plenty of text to fascinate many a reader, no matter where your interest lies--architecture, literature, burial styles across countries/regions/XYZ anthropologic designation, and more. The author is quick to note that everyone's list of places to visit (cemetery or otherwise, if I may clarify/add) looks different, and I would echo that; some that appealed to her wouldn't to me, at least not for the same reasons (and what appealed to her sometimes off-put me).

Not all cemeteries get an equal spread of photographs, and I'll admit the organization felt a little haphazard; while the cemeteries were grouped by region to a point, one could read about a Chicago cemetery on one page and Puerto Rico the next. I didn't quite see the logic behind it. But, that didn't stop me from reading on and thoroughly enjoying.

I especially enjoyed a number of Captain America-style "I understood that reference" moments, whether because I'd visited the cemetery myself or saw a familiar name/book title/etc.

A fascinating look at an interesting topic that spans all time and all people, and "the debt that all men pay" (_National Treasure 2_).

I received an eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This stunningly gorgeous book is now available and I can't wait to receive a hardcopy of it. I received an advance ebook of CITIES OF THE DEAD to read and review. The result? Well, I have now added many of the graveyards shown in this book to my Bucket List of places I want to visit before I join the Cities of the Dead permanently.

The photographs are beautiful and perfectly described so that readers cannot fail to see the radiance and magnificence of the various monuments to the dead.

CITIES OF THE DEAD: The World's Most Beautiful Cemeteries by YOLANDA ZAPPATERRA illustrates the fact that beauty and even tranquility can be found in the most unexpected of places.

Readers of this book will quickly realize that burial monuments exist for the living as much, if not more than as a way to honor the dead.

One of the things that struck me were the similarities between cemeteries all over the world, a fact that demonstrates that people everywhere have much more in common with residents of other countries than they might have originally thought.

This magnificent book deserves a rating of 5 out of 5 Stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Although the digital version of this book is lovely, I highly recommend pre-ordering it's print version. I have already pre-ordered my copy and I am excited to be able to hold this exquisite book in my hands.

*** Thank you to #NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book. ***

Perfect coffee table, book with beautiful photos of cemeteries. The photographs or extensive and extremely interesting to look at.

This book contains pictures and information about beautiful cemeteries across the world.

It is easy to forget how beautiful cemeteries are and this book shows that in a respectful way.

There is a nice balance between the photographs and information.

Interesting book about cemeteries across the globe. Nice pictures accompany the writing. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

This book is hauntingly beautiful. Such a beautiful collection of photos, taken in a sensitive and respectful way. A really interesting book!