Known as the gateway to Barcelona, Montjuïc Cemetery was inaugurated in 1883 and opened as Barcelona’s main burial ground to accommodate the city’s rapidly increasing population during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The site is located on a steep hillside facing the sea, making it particularly interesting and distinctive in its design. The winding pathways and multiple levels, which span across a 56-hectare site contain over one million burial and cremation ashes in its plots, niches and mausoleums. I spent around three hours here and only saw the lower sections of the cemetery, but if you want to walk all the way to the top, where you can see the crematorium, I would recommend spending most of the day here!

Within the necropolis you are able to discover a wide selection of artistic styles including many gothic, classical, art-nouveau and modernist graves. During the turn of the 19th century Barcelona was home to many rich bourgeoisie families who commissioned their own elaborate vaults, chapels and marble designs to reflect their grandeur and opulent status in death as it was in life. Due to many leading sculptors and architects designing these memorials, the cemetery is filled with some of the most beautiful and astounding funeral art you will experience in the whole of Europe. You will see hundreds of angels, marble carvings and terraced niches, but the two graves which caught my attention the most were that of ‘Dr. Farreras Framis’ and ‘Nicolau Juncosa’.

Dr. Farreras Framis was a professor of anatomy who died in 1888 and his spectacular burial site can be found next to the road near the South entrance. It is instantly recognisable by the cloaked full-length skeleton which lays upon the top of the grave, which was sculpted by the artist Rossend Nobas.

The second grave is that of Nicolau Juncosa, which can be found a few sections up in the middle of the cemetery. Here you will see a shrouded reaper-like figure looming over a seated Juncosa, with its bony skeletal hand resting upon his shoulder. Both graves are wonderful examples of memento mori and can’t be missed when visiting Montjuïc.

Located in the western section of the cemetery you will find one of the most evocative sites, the ‘Fossar de la Pedrera’, also known as the Stone Ditch or Grave of the Quarry.  It is estimated that 4,000 people were buried in this mass grave after their execution by General Franco following the fall of Barcelona to his fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Tip: Tie in a visit to the Museum of Funeral Carriages before or after your visit, which is located on the road leading up to the entrance.