Seen as we approached Cirauqui. We see these all the time. Most of them seem to be full. Many of them have the tall thin cypress trees around them.
Cemetery
Camino Frances from Saint Jean to Sahagun, then a week in Zamora
Seen as we approached Cirauqui. We see these all the time. Most of them seem to be full. Many of them have the tall thin cypress trees around them.
Not surprising they are full. After all people have lived here (and died here) for centuries.
In Italy you have to pay a small fee every year, or maybe 10 years I forget, or they move your marker to the side and put someone else there. Actually seems like a good system. You stay until no one remembers you. I read a book once about a city where the dead lived until no one remembered them and then they move on to a place the book didn’t specify.
I bit of useless trivia: the Wadi-us-Salaam cemetery in Najaf, Iraq is the world’s largest cemetery. Najaf is a holy city for Shia Muslims as the Imam Ali shrine is there. The cemetery has 6,000,000 graves and is still expanding.
I seem to remember hearing about cities of the dead. I could ask Claude about it but maybe Henry will enlighten me.
Sorry, don’t have anything to add about “cities of the dead.” Najaf, despite the enormous cemetery, isn’t a “dead city.” It is a Shia pilgrimage site, along with nearby Karbala and Kufa. More or less, this is where Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and the first Shia Imam (of 12), led his resistance to the Umayyad dynasty and was killed.
I was thinking of necropolis. Cairo has one stretching out several miles.