Vyšehrad Cemetery and Slavín

The burial ground beside the Basilica of St. Peter and Paul has a history at Vyšehrad reaching back to the Middle Ages — the earliest references to a cemetery here date from the 13th century. Its current form as a national burial ground took shape only in 1869, when, on the initiative of the patriotic Provost Václav Štulc, the old chapter cemetery began its transformation into a representative resting place for distinguished figures of the Czech nation. The cemetery covers just under one hectare; from the 1870s onwards it has been lined with Neo-Renaissance arcades modelled on Italian examples, designed by Antonín Barvitius and completed by Antonín Wiehl.

Today the Vyšehrad Cemetery is the resting place of over 600 figures from Czech culture, science and the arts. Visitors will find the graves of composers Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák, poets Jan Neruda and Karel Hynek Mácha, novelist Božena Němcová, playwright Karel Čapek, actor Jan Werich and painter Alfons Mucha. The tombstones form a unique open-air gallery of sculptural art, with works by Josef Václav Myslbek, František Bílek, Jan Štursa, Bohumil Kafka and many others. The cemetery is thus not only a place of quiet remembrance, but also a survey of Czech artistic production from the 19th century to the present day.

The central and most monumental feature of the cemetery is Slavín, a grand communal tomb for selected national figures, situated on its eastern and highest side. It was built between 1889 and 1893 to a design by architect Antonín Wiehl; the sculptural decoration, including the allegorical figure of the Genius of the Homeland bowing over the sarcophagus, is the work of sculptor Josef Mauder. The motto of Slavín, Though they have died, they still speak, was proposed by the poet Julius Zeyer, who in 1901 became its first interred. Today Slavín holds the remains of 56 individuals, among them painter Alfons Mucha, violinist Josef Slavík, soprano Ema Destinnová and novelist Jaroslav Vrchlický.