Mirogoj Cemetery
Mirogoj
Interesting facts
- More than 300,000 people have been laid to rest at Mirogoj, in only about 60,000 graves and tombs.
- When Zagreb was hit by a strong earthquake in 1880, damaging well over a thousand buildings, Bollé's newly started arcades came through unharmed.
- No fences were allowed between the burial grounds of different faiths, so Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish sections flow into one another.
- Bollé built the arcades of brick on stone foundations but used then-modern steel and reinforced concrete, and roofed the domes in copper.
- The Serbian Orthodox chapel of Saints Peter and Paul was added inside the cemetery in 1891.
- The church of Christ the King at the entrance was among the last pieces of the ensemble, built between 1927 and 1929.
- Franjo Tuđman, the first president of independent Croatia, and the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Vladimir Prelog are both buried here.
- The opera soprano Zinka Milanov, a star of the Metropolitan Opera for decades, also rests at Mirogoj.
- The European Historic Cemeteries Association counts Mirogoj among the most important cemeteries in Europe.
- Before Mirogoj, Zagreb buried its dead in separate parish and denominational graveyards; the new cemetery replaced them with a single municipal one.
Why it is worth it
Mirogoj is less a cemetery on the edge of Zagreb than a walled city of the dead laid out as a park. Its entrance is a long, pale wall of arcades crowned by a row of green copper cupolas, with the church of Christ the King at the centre, and behind it tree-lined avenues, lawns and ivy run between tens of thousands of graves. The land once belonged to the linguist and national reformer Ljudevit Gaj and was bought by the city after his death; the cemetery was opened on 6 November 1876, and its present form is the work of the architect Hermann Bollé.
Bollé's arcades are the great sight. Construction started in 1879, only three years after the first burials, and went on for decades; the result is a continuous covered gallery that wraps the burial ground, its walls lined with family tombs, bronze portraits, marble reliefs and mourning figures. Many of the finest Croatian sculptors worked here — Ivan Rendić, Robert Frangeš-Mihanović, Ivan Meštrović, Toma Rosandić, Antun Augustinčić, Dušan Džamonja among them — so that a slow walk under the arches is also a walk through the history of Croatian sculpture. Locals call the place an open-air gallery, and it deserves the name.
From the start Mirogoj was meant for everyone: Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews, Protestants and those of no faith lie in the same grounds, each with their own sections and symbols. The graves of the composer Ivan Zajc, the writer Miroslav Krleža, the basketball player Dražen Petrović and the inventor Slavoljub Penkala are among some 60,000 on its roughly 72 hectares. The earthquake of March 2020 damaged the arcades and cupolas, and their repair is part of the recent story of the place. It is best seen slowly, in the soft light of an autumn afternoon, when the arcades throw long shadows across the graves.
Getting there
Mirogoj lies on a hill in the north of Zagreb, about 2.5 km from the main square. City buses 106, 203 and 226 stop at the gates. Zagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG) is about 12 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Mirogoj City Cemetery, also known as Mirogoj Cemetery, is a cemetery park that is considered to be among the more noteworthy landmarks in the city of Zagreb. The cemetery inters members of all religious groups: Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Latter Day Saints; irreligious graves can all be found. In the arcades are the last resting places of many famous Croats. Mirogoj has 60,000 graves and it’s a resting place of 322,000 people.
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