South Park Street Cemetery

South Park Street Cemetery lies on Park Street, also called Mother Teresa Sarani, in central Kolkata, West Bengal. Opened in 1767 as a burial ground for the city's growing British community, it is regarded as one of the oldest non-church Christian cemeteries in the world and closed to new burials in the early 19th century. The grounds are filled with tall Palladian and Indo-Saracenic tombs, domed mausoleums, pyramids, obelisks and urns in brick and plaster, arranged along streets in a pattern resembling a miniature city of the dead. Many monuments were designed in the classical styles favoured by the Georgian-era community. Among the people buried here are Sir William Jones, the orientalist and founder of the Asiatic Society, who died in 1794, the poet and teacher Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, who taught at Hindu College, and Major General Charles Stuart, known as Hindoo Stuart for his adoption of Indian customs. Many graves are of soldiers, merchants, officials and women who died young from disease, giving a vivid picture of mortality in colonial Calcutta. After decades of neglect and vegetation damage, the site was restored with the help of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia and the Archaeological Survey of India. Conservation has repaired many monuments and cleared the paths, and a guide to the cemetery has been published for visitors. Visitors walk the paths among the monuments reading inscriptions that record cause of death, birthplace and rank. The cemetery is now a protected heritage site, maintained as an open-air museum of colonial funerary art, although some monuments remain weathered. The atmosphere is quiet, and the walls shut out most street noise.