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Zagreb
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Ranged across a hillside just over 2km northeast of the centre, the main city cemetery of Mirogoj was laid out by Hermann Bolle in 1876.
The main (western) entrance to the graveyard is in many ways his most impressive work: an ivy-covered, fortress-like wall topped by a row of greening cupolas. The cemetery serves all Zagreb's citizens regardless of faith, so alongside the Catholic gravestones you'll find Orthodox memorials bearing Cyrillic script, Muslim graves adorned with the crescent of Islam, and socialist-era tombstones boasting the petokraka, or five-pointed star. The most evocative parts of this vast necropolis are the arcades running either side of the main entrance, containing work by some of Croatia's best late-nineteenth-century sculptors, with rows of elegantly rendered memorials overlooked by spindly cast-iron lanterns. If you head right from the entrance, it's difficult to miss Ivan Ren&'s grieving female figures atop the graves of Petar Preradović and Emanuel Priester; while, slightly further on, Robert Frangeš Mihanovic's extraordinary bleak relief of stooping bearded figures decorates the tomb of the Mayer family. Head left from the entrance to find the Miletić tomb, where Rudolf Valdec's fine Angel of Death is framed on either side by outstretched sculpted hands into which descendants of the family still place roses. Bus #106 heads up to Mirogoj from Kaptol every fifteen minutes or so; otherwise, take tram #14 (direction Mihaljevac) fromTrg bana Jelačić to Gupčeva Zvijezda, then walk for ten minutes up to the cemetery via Mirogojska cesta.
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