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Tombstone tourist (otherwise known as a "cemetery enthusiast", "cemetery tourist", "grave hunter", "graver", or "taphophile") describes an individual who has a passion for and enjoyment of
cemeteries A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a bu ...
,
epitaph An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...
s, gravestone rubbing, photography, art, and history of (famous) deaths. The term has been most notably used by author and biographer Scott Stanton as the title of his former website and book ''The Tombstone Tourist: Musicians'' (2003), about the lives and gravesites of famous musicians. Some cemetery tourists are particularly interested in the historical aspects of cemeteries or the historical relevance of their inhabitants.
La Recoleta Cemetery La Recoleta Cemetery ( es, Cementerio de la Recoleta) is a cemetery located in the Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It contains the graves of notable people, including Eva Perón, presidents of Argentina, Nobel Prize winners, ...
in
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
, Old Jewish Cemetery in
Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
or
Zentralfriedhof The Vienna Central Cemetery (german: Wiener Zentralfriedhof) is one of the largest cemeteries in the world by number of interred, and is the most well-known cemetery among Vienna's nearly 50 cemeteries. The cemetery's name is descriptive of its ...
(Central Cemetery) in
Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
carry a large array of famous inhabitants and their tombs, that make the cemeteries significant tourist destinations. The
historic cemeteries of New Orleans The Historic Cemeteries of New Orleans, New Orleans, United States, are a group of forty-two cemeteries that are historically and culturally significant. These are distinct from most cemeteries commonly located in the United States in that they a ...
are tourist destinations because of their relevance to the cultural history of the city. Genealogy tourists make considerable effort to search out cemeteries and their records, to verify grave records and ancestral burial locations.


History

For centuries, people have made
pilgrimages A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...
to the burial sites of religious icons and leaders. In fact, such was common during medieval times when people went to gravesites or to shrines to venerate saints. In China, the ancient tradition of
ancestor worship The veneration of the dead, including one's ancestors, is based on love and respect for the deceased. In some cultures, it is related to beliefs that the dead have a continued existence, and may possess the ability to influence the fortune of t ...
also involved a veneration of dead relatives with visitations to shrines and gravesites. During the 19th century, garden cemeteries began to appear that encouraged visitors to stay and visit in the cemetery. Famous among these is the
Père Lachaise cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (french: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise ; formerly , "East Cemetery") is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (). With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figure ...
in
Paris, France Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
, which continues to invite tourists to visit and see elaborate memorials not only to the world famous, but to lesser known individuals as well. Cemetery records have also been a way of verifying genealogical data. Making gravestone rubbings was in practice for centuries as a way of providing this documentation and appreciating the carvings on the tombstones. Among genealogists, scouring cemeteries looking for the graves of dead ancestors is a common and longstanding practice with individuals often relying on limited and outdated information to find burial sites.


Today

The hunting of graves has become digital as many cemetery transcribers and ancestor hunters have begun using
GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...
equipment to locate the area where a graveyard or gravesite is reputed to be.


See also

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Canadian Headstones Canadian Headstones is a project to capture digital images and the complete transcription of cemetery stones. It is a web-based Canadian non-profit corporation run completely by volunteers. History Jim McKane began his genealogical quest in th ...
*
Find a Grave Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry.com. Its stated mission is "to help people from all over the world work together to find, record and present fin ...
* Interment.net *
National Cemetery Administration The United States National Cemetery System is a system of 164 cemeteries in the United States and its territories. The authority to create military burial places came during the American Civil War, in an act passed by the U.S. Congress ...
's Nationwide Gravesite Locator *
Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) is a web-based genealogical research co-op that functions solely by the services of volunteers. Volunteers from any part of the world may offer services to any requester, such as research of birth, marria ...


References


Further reading

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tombstone Tourist Types of tourism Cultural aspects of death