Colonel J. W. C. van Gorcum, who died in 1880, is buried on the Protestant side. And his wife, Lady van Efferden (J.C.P.H van Aefferden) speaks Catholic. They married in 1842, when she was 22 and he was 33.
His wife, who belonged to a noble family, did not want to lie in the family tomb; instead, she wanted to be closer to her husband and asked to be buried as close to him as possible.
Her wish was granted, and the lovers are still holding hands.
The Argentine Cemetery of Recoleta - a famous cemetery located in the eponymous district of Buenos Aires - became the last refuge of Eva Duarta de Peron (Evita Peron) and not only. Many military leaders, presidents, scientists and poets are buried here.
David Alleno was an Italian immigrant who worked as a cemetery caretaker for 29 years. David also dreamed that his body would lie in this cemetery. He saved money to buy himself a place and built his own tombstone. He even returned to his homeland to find a stone-cutter there who would bring his idea to life. The caretaker wanted the carver to depict him with keys, a broom and a bucket of water. Rumors say that David invested own life into this work, and as soon as the tombstone was completed, he died.
Others object to this that David did not die until many years later.
Bust this strict woman also located in the Recoleta Cemetery. The stone statue of a man sitting back to back with a lady is none other than her husband. Unlike the charming Catholic and Protestant couple, these spouses do not hold hands or even look at each other.
The husband died first, and a few years later the wife also died. They lived together for 30 years. Without saying a word to each other.
Fernand Arbelot was a musician and actor. He died in 1990 and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, and before his death he wanted only one thing - to look into the face of his wife forever.
A boy who spent most of his young life in a wheelchair, after death, was able to break these boundaries and fly - now he is free.
The Parisian Père Lachaise cemetery can rightfully be considered one of the most visited cemeteries in the world, where many of the monuments are real works of art. But perhaps the most dramatic of all comes from a writer most people have never even heard of.
Georges Rodenbach - Belgian writer XIX century, author of the symbolic story “Dead Bruges” (Bruges-la-Morte). Main character works - Yug Vian, a widower inconsolably mourning his early departed wife.
The cemetery in the village of Sapinta, Maramures County, Romania, is known for its cheerful atmosphere. Surely those who asked to be buried in this cemetery had a strong sense of humor.
The graves reflect people's hobbies during life. Some were shepherds, others were soldiers, and others loved parties and poetry. Some tombstones tell the story of the death of those buried: some were killed by thieves, others were killed in a car accident...
Perfect Sense of Humor
Jack Crowell - owner last factory for the production of wooden clothespins in the USA. He always wanted children to be able to play on his grave.
When Ray Tse Jr. died at the age of 15, his older brother, a successful businessman, decided to give his brother, who always dreamed of driving a car, a posthumous gift. The stone car cost $250 thousand, but maybe now Ray is happy driving his own Mercedes Benz. The grave is in Linden Cemetery in New Jersey.
Probably the second most popular French cemetery, Montparnasse, became the refuge of the inventor Charles Pigeon, who sits up in the bed where he lay with his wife and looks around in search of an angel.
None of the people living on earth knows what awaits us after death. The grave puts an end to a person’s earthly life, however, in some cases, even in it the deceased cannot find peace. Next you will find the most mysterious burial places in the world, around which there are many mystical legends.
Rosalia Lombardo (1918 - 1920, Capuchin catacombs in Italy)
At the age of 2 years, this girl died of pneumonia. The inconsolable father could not part with his daughter’s body and turned to Alfredo Salafia to embalm the child’s body. Salafia did a tremendous job (drying the skin with a mixture of alcohol and glycerin, replacing the blood with formaldehyde and using salicylic acid to prevent the fungus from spreading throughout the body). As a result, the girl's body, located in a sealed coffin with nitrogen, looks as if she had fallen asleep.
Cages for the Dead (Victorian era)
During the Victorian era, metal cages were built over graves. Their purpose is not exactly known. Some believe that this was how the graves were protected from destroyers, others think that this was done to ensure that the dead did not leave their graves.
Taira no Masakado (940, Japan)
This man was a samurai and during the Heian era he became the leader of one of the largest uprisings against the rule of Kyoto. The uprising was suppressed and in 940 Masakado was beheaded. According to historical chronicles, the samurai’s head did not rot for three months and all this time he quickly rolled his eyes. Then the head was buried, and later the city of Tokyo was built on the burial site. Tair's grave is still preserved, as the Japanese believe that if it is disturbed, it can bring disaster to Tokyo and the whole country. Now this grave is the oldest burial site in the world, which is kept perfectly clean.
Lilly Gray (1881-1958, Salt Lake City Cemetery, USA)
The inscription on the tombstone reads "Sacrifice of the Beast 666." Lilly's husband Elmer Gray called this the US government, which he blamed for the death of his wife.
Chase Family Crypt (Barbados)
The family crypt of this couple is one of the most mysterious places on the Caribbean islands. IN early XIX centuries, it was discovered several times that coffins were moved after they were placed in the crypt, and it was established that no one entered the crypt. Some coffins stood upright, others were on the steps near the entrance. In 1820, by order of the governor, the coffins were transported to another place, and the entrance to the crypt was closed forever.
Mary Shelley (1797 - 1851, St Peter's Chapel, Dorset, England)
In 1822, Mary Shelley cremated the body of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, who died in an accident in Italy. After cremation, the man’s intact heart was discovered among the ashes; his woman took it home to England and kept it until her death. In 1851, Mary died and was buried with her husband’s heart, which she kept in the manuscript “Adonai: Elegy of Death.”
Russian mafia (Ekaterinburg, Russia)
Monuments in full height, installed on the graves of representatives of the criminal world, many of us have seen. At some monuments you can even find video cameras protecting them from vandals.
Inez Clark (1873 - 1880, Chicago, USA)
In 1880, 7-year-old Inez died from a lightning strike. By order of her parents, a sculpture-monument in a plexiglass cube was installed on her grave. The sculpture is made in the height of a girl, depicting her sitting on a bench with a flower and an umbrella in her hands.
Kitty Jay (Devon, England)
A nondescript hill overgrown with grass, local residents called Jay's grave. At the end of the 18th century, Kitty Jay committed suicide, and her grave became a cult site for ghost hunters. Since suicides could not be buried outside the cemetery, Kitty was buried at a crossroads so that her soul could not find a way to the afterlife. To this day, fresh flowers constantly appear on her grave.
Elizaveta Demidova (1779 - 1818, Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris, France)
At the age of 14, Elizaveta Demidova was married to the first prince of San Donato, whom she did not love. The unfortunate woman was one of the richest women of her time, and she bequeathed her entire fortune to the person who could spend a week in her crypt without food. Until now, no one has done this, and therefore her fortune remains unclaimed.
We invite you to take a look at a few unusual graves which can be seen in cemeteries in different countries world:
The graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, who were not allowed to be buried together. J.W.C. van Gorcum, colonel of the Dutch cavalry and commissioner of militia in Limburg, is buried in the Protestant part of this cemetery. His wife, Lady J.C.P.H van Aefferden, is buried in the Catholic part. They married in 1842, when she was 22 and the colonel 33, but he was a Protestant and not a member of the nobility.
Their marriage caused a lot of gossip in Roermond. Having been married for 38 years, the colonel died in 1880 and was buried in the Protestant part of the cemetery near the wall. His wife died in 1888 and wished to be buried not in the family tomb, but on the other side of the wall, which was the closest place to her husband's grave. Two hands in a handshake connect the graves across the wall.
Recoleta Cemetery is best known for being the burial place of Maria Eva Duarte de Peron or Evita, but in fact many famous military leaders, presidents, scientists, poets and other important people are buried there or rich Argentines.
David Alleno was an Italian immigrant who dreamed of being buried in this prestigious cemetery, where he worked as a caretaker from 1881 to 1910. He saved enough money to buy himself a place and built his own tomb. He even went back to his homeland to find an artist who could carve his figure out of marble, complete with keys, broom and watering can. Legend has it that after the tomb was finished, David committed suicide on his grave, but many authorities say he died several years after the tomb was built.
This tombstone is also located in the Recoleta Cemetery in Argentina. But what is unusual about it? Well, let's start with the fact that a man sitting on a sofa is seriously looking at the horizon, and a woman's bust is standing behind him, but they are looking in opposite directions. They are positioned this way because he died first, so the family made his mausoleum. A few years later, when his wife died, in her will she asked that her image be placed in such a way that it represented their marriage: they spent the last 30 years of marriage without saying a word to each other.
Fernand Arbelot was a musician and actor who died in 1990 and is buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. He wished to look at his wife's face forever.
This unique monument represents little boy who jumps out of his wheelchair. Chained to wheelchair spending most of his short life, he was finally freed from earthly burdens.
The headstones are arranged around a tree, which has grown noticeably since part of St Pancras cemetery was cleared in 1860 to make way for railway between London and Midland. The young architect supervising the work was Thomas Hardy, a famous author.
The Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is probably the most visited cemetery in the world, and it is famous not only for the beauty of its monuments, but also for the celebrities buried there. However, one of the most dramatic graves belongs to an author most people have never heard of.
Georges Rodenbach was a 19th-century Belgian writer, best known for books that were largely intended as serious literature for students. Dead Bruges (Bruges-la-Morte), symbolic romance, published in 1892, was about a man grieving for his deceased wife. Therefore, it is excruciatingly painful to look at Rodenbach’s grave, the tombstone of which represents himself, rising from the grave with a rose in his hand.
When Jonathan Reed's wife, Mary, died in 1893, the widower was inconsolable and did not want to leave the grave. Moreover, he was so devoted to her that he moved to live on her grave, where he lived (with a parrot) for 10 years. Reed died in 1905 and was buried with Mary.
The most famous landmark in Hiawatha, Kansas, is the 1930s tomb located in Mount Hope Cemetery, near the southeastern edge of the city. John Milburn Davis arrived in Hiawatha in 1879 at the age of 24. After some time, he married Sarah Hart, the daughter of his employer. The Davises started their own farm, which prospered, and were married for 50 years. When Sarah died in 1930, the Davises were already wealthy. Over the next seven years, John Davis spent much of the family fortune to build a monument to mark Sarah's grave.
The amount spent on the Davis Memorial is estimated at approximately $100,000, but the actual total is several times that amount. In any case, it was a huge sum, the collection of which required mortgaging the entire household and mansion. This was during the great depression, when people could not make ends meet.
Reasons that could explain the extravagance of such an act include great love, guilt, anger at Sarah's family, and a desire for the Davis fortune to be exhausted before John's death.
The Davis memorial grew piece by piece, which is quite sad. If it had been built according to a pre-made plan, then perhaps it would have been larger and more beautiful. The memorial site was originally a simple headstone, but John worked with Horace England, a monument dealer in Hiawatha, to make the monument more and more elaborate. The memorial includes 11 life-size statues of John and Sarah Davis made of Italian marble, stone urns and a marble dome rumored to weigh more than 50 tons.
Jack Crowell owned the last wooden clothespin factory in the United States. He originally wanted a real spring installed in the clothespin so children could play with it. He is buried in Middlesex, Vermont.
Now in major cities In Europe you can find very unusual monuments and sculptures, often striking with their amusing, funny and even ridiculous appearance.
Well, is it really possible to take such a monument standing in Amsterdam seriously? “Don’t drink the branch you’re sitting on”:
By the way, a similar monument was erected in Yakutsk. Here he is:
And in Brussels on the street you can meet an old lady like this with a bag, counting her money.
There, in Brussels, there is this funny monument: a policeman and the prankish thief who caught him:
A queue monument was erected in Washington. Look how tourists organically join it:
The situation with passage through walls is very unusual. If in Los Angeles a clerk with a suitcase could only stick his head into the wall...
That French writer Marcel Aimé, in Paris, has already passed through the wall, and is now in the process of emerging from it...
But the bronze woman from Santa Fe, New Mexico lay down to rest right on the sidewalk. Tourists are joining!
People in Holland love music. Here, a violinist broke through the floor to please the ears of passers-by:
In Bratislava there is even a monument to a plumber leaning out of a sewer manhole:
By the way, there are plumbers not only in Bratislava, but also in Ukraine. This is such a sad “Santa” from Berdyansk. By the way, there are similar monuments in Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, and Yekaterinburg...
And in Oslo a stone man was seen fighting off stone children. Or is he juggling them? What's remarkable is that the man is naked...
In Seoul, street benches are held up not by supports, but by strong teeth! Feast your eyes on these comrades!
By the way, the Danes also have a sense of humor. For example, a monument to uh... how can I put this mildly?
But the Danish madam from Ringkobing will probably have more:
Another rather unusual monument was erected in Melbourne. Something is wrong in the picture, isn't it?
By the way, you can’t hide anywhere from these cyclists... Even at the bottom of the sea!
In addition to stone or bronze people, the world is flooded with monuments to things, and this cannot be kept silent about!
The newest of them is a monument, let's say, political. Monument to the shoe thrown at Bush the Younger:
And in Paris there is a monument to the finger. And he sticks out from under the ground:
In Australia - to the wallet:
In Nakavik, Canada - an axe:
In Springfield (USA) - a monument to a fork:
And in Norway, Oslo - a paper clip:
And even books - in Berlin:
And in Russia they responded to this with a powerful three-meter stool! “Monument to the first stool of the Russian land” was installed in the former estate of the Arshenevsky brothers on Taganka:
And in Germany, in Braunschweig, stray cats were spotted (it’s good that at least these ones don’t yell):
And the tap in Cadiz pouring water from the sky:
London is famous for its traffic lights, and on this occasion there is this monument erected there:
And in Prague - a monument to a woman’s shoe:
And now, let's move to Russia. What is there in Russian land? Let's start with animals. The Russian people love their little brothers!
For example, in St. Petersburg, on Malaya Sadovaya Street, there is a cast-iron cat, who was christened Elisha Kotovich Pitersky. The cat climbed high - to the second floor of the Eliseevsky grocery store, and therefore it is not so easy to notice:
Another cat (or rather a cat) “hangs” at the window of the creative center “Mitki VKHUTEMAS” (Pravdy St., 16) on the 6th floor. Dressed like famous hero cartoon, she was immediately nicknamed Matroskin’s cat:
And in Moscow, in a park by the lake near the Novodevichy Convent, a whole sculptural composition “Make way for ducklings!” was opened. Little ducklings look around, quack, look for a worm in the grass - in a word, they behave as if they were alive. It’s not for nothing that a guard was placed at the monument - the ducklings are trying to steal them!
By the way, the sculptors did not ignore even such a tiny creature as a bee. In Kuzminki Park, for example, they erected a monument to the bee Kuza, who sits on one of the columns depicting a honeycomb:
“The Nose” is ranked among the most unusual monuments in St. Petersburg. By the way, he, like his prototype, loves to take a walk. For example, in 2002 he suddenly disappeared from his pedestal. He was found a year later on the landing of house No. 15, not far from Voznesensky Prospekt, where his rightful place was located:
I am also placing here a selection of monuments whose location is unknown to me, but it is simply impossible not to show them to you, dear readers!
Worldwide famous monument The elephant from Salvador Dali's painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony" is simply amazing!
And these are the real Thick and Thin:
Oh, how the mother hyped up her daughter. If only she didn't let go!
Here the boys jump into the water and squeal with anticipation:
And the girls, remaining on land, play leapfrog:
And who is this? A handsome knight on horseback? But what about the horse?
And lastly: a cow on a tree! Take a closer look. What does she remind you of? Maybe a carton of milk?
Grieving relatives do everything to perpetuate the memory of their deceased loved ones, turning ordinary gravestones into either something very allegorical or into sculptures that are real works of art
Grieving relatives do everything to perpetuate the memory of their deceased loved ones, turning ordinary gravestones into either something very allegorical or into sculptures that are real works of art:
1. Woman at the piano. She may have been a musician during her lifetime.
2. This woman really loved Mickey Mouse
3. Maybe this guy died because he smoked too much?
4. The tomb of the creator of the labyrinth
5. "Eternal Dream"
6. The tree swallowed the old grave
7. Tombstone over the grave of the inventor of the gas lamp, Charles Pigeon, Montparnasse cemetery, Paris, France
8. This grave was made at the behest of a grief-stricken mother for her late 10-year-old daughter in 1871.
When the girl was alive, she was terrified of thunderstorms. Next to her grave there is a special basement that was dug to the level of the coffin. During a thunderstorm, the girl’s mother went down to the basement to “calm down” her child.
9. A life-size monument to a girl under a glass cover was custom-made at the request of her mother.
10. This is the grave of a 16-year-old girl. The tombstone was made by order of her sister
11. “Love to the grave”, Thailand
12. This monument depicts the Savior holding in his hands two ropes from a simple children’s swing with a crossbar
A little girl is sitting on a swing below. Sculptural composition reminds us that the life of everyone on earth is in the hands of God.
13. A tombstone in the shape of a mobile phone was discovered in one of the Israeli cemeteries
The tombstone is engraved with various inscriptions, for example: “Please leave a message - I will reply as soon as I can.”
14. "Together Forever"
15. This terrifying grave is located in a cemetery in Genoa, Italy.
16. The grave of the Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach.The tombstone represents the writer himself, rising from the grave with a rose in his hand
17. The design of this Victorian grave is to ensure that the dead do not leave their final resting place.
Many in those days firmly believed in the existence of vampires and thus prevented the release of the reincarnated deceased. In fact, medical students needed corpses to study anatomy, and in order to gain knowledge, they did not disdain excavating fresh graves. To protect the assassination attempt, relatives ordered forged gratings for the graves of their loved ones.
18. Nature is inexorable...
19. Fernand Arbelot was a musician and actor who died in 1990
He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. During his lifetime, Fernand wished to look at his wife's face forever.
20. 18th century gravestone under which a French journalist rests
21. Gravestone in the form of a scrabble board
22. The graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, who were not allowed to be buried together
In the 1800s, it was illegal for Catholics and Protestants to be buried in the same cemetery.
23. This grave is all that remains of an old rural cemetery in India
An interstate highway was built on the site of the cemetery. The grandson, whose grandmother was buried there, refused to move the grave. In the end, the authorities met him halfway and built a road around the grave.