Unusual Cemeteries Around The World

In the small town of Săpânța, Romania sits an unusual cemetery. The Cimitirul Vesel-or “Merry Cemetery“-is a bright, colorful cemetery filled with hand-carved grave markers. On them are funny limericks that describe who is buried there, or even how that person passed. Stan Ioan Pătraş, born in 1904 in the town, is responsible for the brightly colored and cleverly captioned gravestones. He began carving the cemetery’s markers in 1935, as well as writing the descriptive limericks and painting the images of the deceased on the gravestones. One of the gravestones reads: “Ioan Toaderu loved horses. One more thing he loved very much. To sit at a table in a bar. Next to someone else’s wife.“ Within a span of 40 years, Pătraş single-handedly carved, wrote poems for, and painted more than 800 grave markers. Pătraş passed away in 1977-after carving his own gravestone for the Merry Cemetery.