Highgate Cemetery

Most famous as the final resting place of Karl Marx, Christina Rosetti, George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) and other notable mortals, Highgate Cemetery is set in 20 wonderfully wild and atmospheric hectares, with dramatic and overdecorated Victorian family crypts. It is divided into two parts on either side of Swain’s Lane. On the eastern side you can visit the grave of Karl Marx, which is regularly graced with bouquets from the few remaining communist embassies in London. This slightly overgrown and wild part of the cemetery is a very pleasant walk but it’s merely the overflow area. It’s the wonderfully atmospheric western section of this Victorian Valhalla that is the main draw. To visit it, you’ll have to take a tour and deal directly with the brigade of sometimes stroppy silver-haired ladies who run the cemetery. It is a maze of winding paths leading to the Circle of Lebanon, rings of tombs flanking a circular path and topped with a majestic, centuries-old cedar tree. The guides are engaging and gladly point out the various symbols of the age and the eminent dead occupying the tombs, including the scientist Michael Faraday and the dog-show founder Charles Cruft. ‘Dissenters’ (non-Church of Englanders) were buried way off in the woods. Tours depart 2pm Monday to Friday except in December to February (book ahead by phone) and every hour 11am to 4pm Saturday and Sunday (last tour at 3pm December to February, no bookings). Children under the age of eight are not allowed on tours of the West Cemetery. Highgate remains a working cemetery – the most recent well-known addition was Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who was done away with under most sinister circumstances in 2006, when the radioactive isotope Polonium 210 somehow made it into his tea in a Mayfair hotel. The cemetery closes during burials, so you might want to call ahead just to be sure it will be open.