About this experience
I invite you to one of the most amazing places in Barcelona, located on the beautiful slope of Montjuic Mountain. From here you can enjoy a mesmerizing view of the sea. But curious minds are not drawn to this. Five-story apartment buildings, family mansions, magnificent monuments, clean streets, cypresses, whose shade saves rare travelers from the exhausting heat. A real city. Only this is the city of the dead at Montjuic Cemetery.
Montjuic Cemetery
Rentals in this City of the Dead are available for 15, 25, and 50 years. The most expensive ones are the lower floors. Upstairs is cheaper, but to visit the deceased, relatives have to use a special staircase to reach the house.
You have probably seen this place if you watched Pedro Almodovar's film "All About My Mother". The final scenes of this film are of Montjuic Cemetery. There are a total of nine cemeteries in the city. But this is the largest. 152,474 people rest here. In 2013, the cemetery turned 130 years old. It was designed by architect Leandro Albareda.
This place is a real open-air museum. The wonderful interweaving of classicism, Gothic style, and modernism with almost no visitors gives an extraordinary feeling of being in a fairytale world.
Program
During our two-hour walk, we will explore the entire City of the Dead. We will see graves of both geniuses and villains: musician Isaac Albeniz, singer Victoria de los Angeles, general Antonio Escobar; as well as - drug dealer Angel Franco.
From the main entrance (from the port side), a serpentine road goes up and then descends to another exit, from the side of Montjuic Park. In addition to the road, there are also stairs mostly running through the center of the cemetery.
I will tell you what local funerals look like: why with such an unusual method of burials, when coffins are placed on non-airtight floors of multi-storey buildings, there is no smell or dangerous bacteria here. Many of the burials are associated with scary legends. For example, a Barcelona bourgeois ordered a tombstone sculpture while still young, sane and of sound memory. He wanted a sculpture on his grave depicting the moment when Death would come for him and take him in its arms. For authenticity, the sculptor made a death mask from his face. The next day, the sculpture was ready. But the customer did not see this work - he suddenly died that night from an unknown illness.
Believe it or not - but according to the locals, scary things happen on the cemetery on a full moon night. In one of the common graves here lies the bloodthirsty vampiress Enriqueta Marti, known for stealing children on the city streets and drinking their blood. And her soul cannot find peace. When the full moon appears in the sky, she emerges from her grave and roams the city streets for another victim. And indeed, all the children who have disappeared in Barcelona over the past 100 years lived near Montjuic Mountain. Therefore, residents of the neighboring districts do not let their little ones out of the house after dark.
