Notable Cemeteries of Dublin

Dublin's largest cemetery - with Joycean and historic graves.

Glasnevin, officially the "Mount Prospect Cemetery", is Dublin's and Ireland's largest cemetery - it was also the first cemetery to allow burials to any (or no) rite, thus solving a pressing problem for 19th century Catholics. Its sheer size and huge number of graves will keep visitors occupied for hours.

Notable graves include: Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Roger Casement, the "Republican Plot", Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera and many burial plots connected to James Joyce.

See also the Guide Review of Glasnevin Cemetery and the Image Gallery of Glasnevin Cemetery for more details.

Dublin's smallest graveyard, a resting place for notable academics.

Size isn't everything - Chaloner's Corner, Dublin's smallest cemetery, is tucked away into a corner of Trinity College, hemmed in by buildings and a footpath. Only a handful of persons found their eternal rest in this busy place (but more are interred either under the Chapel or in a nearby college cemetery). Worth a look for its curiosity value when you visit Trinity College.

The most notable grave is Dr. Luke Chaloner's, he was the first provost of Trinity College (and gave his name to the cemetery in a corner ...).

See also the Guide Review of Trinity College.

Though some tombs are tumbling, this Victorian cemetery is among the best in the world ...

This, too, is a cemetery for all religious denominations. But although Mount Jerome was founded in 1836, first Catholic burials only took place in the 1920s - when gravediggers at Glasnevin went on strike. Today the cemetery is owned by Massey the undertakers, 47 acres in all, with maybe the finest collection of Victorian funerary monuments in Ireland.

Comparisons to Paris' Père-Lachaise and London's Highgate have been drawn.

Notable graves include Sir William Wilde, Sheridan Le Fanu, John Millington Synge, Jack B. Yeats and Sir William Rowan Hamilton.

See also the Guide Review of Mount Jerome Cemetery and the Image Gallery of Mount Jerome Cemetery.

The graveyard, though historic, is just a sideshow to the eerie vaults ...

What lies beneath is the reason most visitors come to Saint Michan's - namely the vaults and several well-preserved, mummified bodies. Here you cannot only visit the dead, you may even shake hands with them. While the churchyard is undoubtedly worth a visit (despite being architecturally bullied by new developments surrounding it), the vaults underneath the old church are the main attraction. And the tour is worth every cent ...

Notable graves include Henry and John Sheares, William Sydney (the despised 3rd Earl of Leitrim), the Emmet Family tomb, Charles Lucas and Alderman Richard Tighe.

See also the Guide Review of Saint Michan's Church.

Dead heroes of the rebellion - in a mass grave - define this small cemetery.

This used to be a military cemetery before Irish independence, access tightly monitored and controlled by crown forces. For exactly this reason the executed leaders of the Easter Rising were buried here in 1916 - in a simple pit and covered with quicklime.

Today the cemetery has been partly converted into a park and a massive memorial erected near the communal grave of the 14 rebels. Overlooked by the modern guard tower of Arbour Hill Prison.

The important graves belong to the fourteen leaders of the Easter Rising, including Patrick Pearse and James Connolly. Other gravestones have been literally side-lined.

Nobody knows how many people are buried here ... or how exactly they died, whether in battle, facing the executioner or simply slaughtered in revenge killings.

This cemetery is for those interested in history only - there is not a lot to see in all fairness. The large open area between the National Museum of Ireland in Collins Barracks and the Liffey was used as a mass grave after the 1798 rebellion. Scores of "croppies" (a nickname for the Irish rebels) were dumped and buried here, the number varying from source to source.

Traditionally it is beleived that Matthew Wolfe Tone and Bartholomew Teeling are among the "cartloads" of (suspected) rebels buried here.

A graveyard with many identified burials - yet the unknown dead command most attention.

The "Stranger's Bank" at old Saint Mary's Abbey was used for unidentified victims of disasters at sea. But when the Dollymount to Howth tram line was built in the last years of the 19th century, an unknown "ganger" (presumed to be English) died during work and was also buried here. Colleagues set up two tram rails as a memorial to him here - one of the strangest grave markers in Dublin.

Another notable grave is the carved tomb of Christopher St. Lawrence and Anna Plunkett (c. 1470).

See also the Guide Review of Howth.

Dublin's most colorful cemetery ... when the bluebells come out in bloom.

Often missed by the huddled masses walking between Merrion Square and Saint Stephen's Green, this small cemetery commands attention mainly in spring - when it is covered n a mass of bluebells! In 1693 this area was designated the "French Burial Ground" for Dublin's small community of Huguenot refugees. It closed in 1901 but is fairly well preserved.

The most notable grave is the Du Bedat family plot - which might have inspired James Joyce to a passage in Ulysses (though there are Du Bedat tombs in Mount Jerome as well ...).