South Park Street Cemetery

South Park Street Cemetery, on Mother Teresa Sarani (Park Street) near Ripon Street in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, is one of the oldest non-church Christian burial grounds in the world outside Europe and a key relic of colonial Calcutta. It was opened in 1767 and used until the 1830s, and it holds the graves of British officials, soldiers, merchants, scholars and their families who died in the early years of the East India Company's rule. The grounds are a quiet, tree-shaded enclosure of dense monuments built in a range of styles, including tall obelisks, Greek-style temples, pyramids, domed pavilions and urns, many of them heavily weathered and covered in moss. Among the notable burials are Sir William Jones, the orientalist who founded the Asiatic Society, the poet and teacher Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, and the young Rose Aylmer, whose early death inspired a poem by Walter Savage Landor. The cemetery was restored in recent decades, and a main avenue with gravel paths allows visitors to walk between the monuments and read the epitaphs, which give a vivid picture of the dangers of life in colonial Bengal, with fever and cholera claiming many lives at young ages. A visit takes 45 to 60 minutes, and early morning or late afternoon are best because the light is softer for photography and the heat is lower. A small entrance fee is charged at the gate, and the site is open during the day, closing before dusk. Visitors should behave quietly and avoid walking on or leaning against the monuments. Mosquitoes can be a nuisance in the monsoon, and the paths can be slippery after rain. The cemetery is a short walk from Park Street's restaurants and the Asiatic Society, so it combines easily with a heritage walk along Park Street.