Vienna Central Cemetery (Zentralfriedhof)

Historic · Simmering (11th)Vienna,Austria

A Vienna cemetery holding three million dead, more than the living city, with deer grazing avenues and composers moved here to draw the crowds.

Vienna Central Cemetery holds about three million dead, more than the city has living residents. Its grounds cover two and a half square kilometres, nearly as much as Vienna's old centre, and some 330,000 graves lie along avenues under seventeen thousand trees. Roe deer graze between the rows, and foxes and kestrels live here. Funerals still take place most days. It opened on cheap farmland far outside the city because the old graveyards were full. Vienna planned it for every faith at once, and the Catholic church objected so strongly that there was never a consecration. The distance made it unpopular, so the council gave people a reason to come: honorary graves, and Beethoven and Schubert brought here from a closed suburban cemetery. They lie together around a Mozart monument that covers nobody, because he was buried at St Marx and never moved. Walk behind Gate 1 and the old Jewish section runs half wild, about a hundred thousand people under leaning stones, and the community that tended them was driven out and murdered.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Two minutes off the musicians' plot the crowd is gone — Almost every visitor stops in that one corner, and the outer sections can be quiet enough to hear your own footsteps.
Come on 1 or 2 November if you can — Viennese families bring candles for All Saints and All Souls, and the cemetery holds more living people then than on any other day.
Step aside and stand still when a funeral passes — You will meet real mourners here, and a camera pointed at a grieving family is not welcome.
Wear shoes you can walk rough ground in — Off the paved avenues, the outer sections and the old Jewish part have soft earth, broken kerbs and roots underfoot.

Things to do

1
Walk the main avenue from the gate to the dome
Start at Gate 2 and take the widest avenue straight ahead. Hearses drive down this road. Just before the church stands the vault where Austria's presidents have been buried since 1951, built deliberately flat so it would not block the view. Climb the church steps and turn round to see the avenue run straight back to the gate.
2
Read the death dates in the musicians' plot
Stand in the musicians' plot and check the death years against 1874, when the cemetery opened. Beethoven died in 1827 and Schubert in 1828, so both stones stand over bodies brought here later. Schubert had asked to be buried near Beethoven, and here they lie side by side. In the next section Arnold Schönberg lies under a plain stone cube.
3
Walk the rows the tree roots have tilted
Go in at Gate 1 instead and the mood changes within a minute. Paths narrow, ivy swallows the stones, and whole rows lean where tree roots have pushed them up. Nothing is locked and nothing is being restored. The work here only stops stones falling further. Leave a small pebble on one, as visitors do.
4
Sit still in a far section until the deer feed
Take a bench in one of the far sections late in the day, well away from the musicians' graves, and stop moving. Roe deer feed in the grass between the stones and come close when nothing on the path stirs. Foxes use the same hour.