Articles

The Birth of the Modern Family Mausoleum

Although the birth of the mausoleum dates to the Tomb of Mausolus in Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey) constructed circa 353 BC, it wasn’t until the early 19th Century that the modern family mausoleum was established as an enduring funerary form. The first family mausoleum was erected in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. Père-Lachaise was established in 1804 as a result of a burial crisis in Paris. Prior to the establishment of Père-Lachaise most people in Paris were unceremoniously buried in city cemeteries and churchyards, but after centuries of burials the cemeteries became over crowded. Père-Lachaise was laid out as a bucolic environment and looked more like a park than a burial ground. More importantly, Père-Lachaise and other cemeteries that used it as a template became a canvas for monuments and mausoleums.

Stachura Mausoleum: Last Impressions

We are all familiar with the saw, “you only have one chance to make a first impression.” Conversely, you only have one chance to make a last impression. A cemetery is, arguably, the best place to make that final statement.

Like many other cemetery explorers, I’m not particularly fond of cookie-cutter flat markers or overly simple plain-Jane tombstones. As a society we have pushed death and cemeteries away, thinking that somehow we’ll lead happier lives denying and defying death. But doing all we can to avoid death makes it harder to truly embrace life. I never feel so truly alive as I do in the midst of a cemetery.

One of my early cemetery excursions took me to a graveyard at the base of Stirling Castle in Scotland. The graveyard was peppered with 17th century tradesmen’s gravestones. These modest markers told me much more than many modern tombs. Carved into the stones were winged skulls telling me that the resident believed in the existence of a soul, (the rise of Scottish Presbyterianism heralded a more promising view of the afterlife) as well as other mortality symbols. More importantly, the stones were often embellished with the tools the person had used in their life. Here were masons and carpenters and weavers and sea captains with the tools of their trade. Those tools made it easier to picture that person even though they had died centuries ago.