Just east of Hampstead Heath is Highgate Cemetery (highgatecemetery.org), London’s most enchanting resting place for the dead. There are a staggering 50,000 graves and more than 170,000 people buried here, including influential names that are in turns infamous, ordinary and legendary, such as philosopher Karl Marx, pop icon George Michael, novelist George Eliot and bare-knuckle boxer Tom Sayers.
This wonderland of crumbling glory has countless Victorian Gothic-style tombs and buildings, constructed during the mid- to late 1800s. They fell into disrepair after WWII, until the Friends of Highgate Cemetery took over the running of the place in 1975 and protected the old catacombs. Much of it remains overgrown, which only adds to the atmosphere.
Pay the admission fee, then roam to your heart’s (or stomach’s) content through the macabre gravestones with sleeping angels, sleeping dogs, Egyptian-style tombs and moss-festooned urns. Marx is buried in the more modern and tidy East Cemetery, but the West Cemetery is the more creepy and atmospheric of the two plots.
