Colon Cemetery (Havana)

Cuba / Ciudad de la Habana / Havanna / Havana
 cemetery, place with historical importance
The Colon Cemetery, or more fully in the Spanish language El Cementerio de Cristobal Colon, is a cemetery that was established in 1876 in the Vedado neighbourhood of Havana on top of the Espada Cemetery. Named for Christopher Columbus, this 140 acre (57 hectare) cemetery is notable for its elaborately scripted memorials. It is estimated that today the cemetery has more than 500 major mausoleums, chapels, and family vaults.

Colon Cemetery has a 75-foot (23 metre) high monument to the firefighters who lost their lives to the great fire of May 17, 1890. As baseball is a leading sport in Cuba, the cemetery has two monuments to baseball players from the Cuban League. The first was erected in 1942 and the second in 1951 for members of the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame.

In February 1898 the recovered bodies of the sailors who died on the United states Navy battleship Maine were interred in the cemetery. In December 1899, the bodies were disinterred and brought back to the United States for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

With more than 800,000 graves, space at the Colon Cemetery is currently at a premium and as such after three years the remains are removed from their tombs, boxed, and placed in a storage building.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colon_Cemetery,_Havana
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   23°7'23"N   82°23'53"W

Comments

  • Necrópolis Colón es en español
  • Cementerio en el que descansan los restos de dos ilustres escritores cubanos como son Alejo Carpentier y José Lezama Lima.
This article was last modified 9 years ago