About the cemetery
Founded in 1833 around the hermitage of Our Lady of Prazeres, the Prazeres Cemetery was established to serve Lisbon's west side alongside Alto de São João Cemetery. In a period of high mortality generated by a cholera epidemic that led to the interruption of burials in the interior of the churches, this cemetery preceded the law of 1835 that forced the establishment of public cemeteries in Portugal.
The cemetery’s management was transferred from royal oversight to Lisbon’s City Council (CML) in 1834. Over time, the cemetery expanded southward to meet the high demand for family mausoleums. In 1869, a new chapel replaced the original hermitage. Though Catholic in affiliation, the cemetery maintained a secular policy, allowing civil and evangelical burials. By the 1870s, it included an autopsy room for forensic use, as Lisbon had no city morgue until 1899. Due to the space used for monuments, temporary burials ceased by the 1930s.
Landscape design and architecture
Designed with a pentagonal plan, Prazeres Cemetery initially included temporary graves and underground sepulchres. Influenced by Paris's Père Lachaise Cemetery, the first private mausoleums were built in 1839, decorated with stelae, columns, and obelisks. The Palmela Mausoleum pyramid, built in 1848, became Europe’s largest private mausoleum.
Chapel mausoleums became common in the 1860s, featuring neo-classical, neo-Gothic, and various other historicist styles. In buildings from the beginning of the 20th century we will find Art Nouveau influence - not only in the buildings, but also in their decorations, such as stained glass windows, wrought iron doors, railings, and tiles. At the same time, the Portuguese House mausoleums were being constructed, marked by their roofs made of red clay tiles (or limestone carved in the shape of a tile roof), their porches, shutter doors and corner windows.
The reduction in available space slowed down the construction of mausoleums in the cemetery, but nevertheless, we can also find some modernist mausoleums, with straight lines and almost no ornamentation, contrasting the neoclassical mausoleums of the 19th century. Although mausoleum construction ended in 1945, a few notable contemporary pieces are still present. The cemetery, mostly shaded by dark green cypress trees, reflects an architectural evolution spanning three centuries.
Historic significance
Lisbon, being the capital of Portugal, concentrates all its major political, administrative and cultural institutions and, consequentially, its most prominent figures. Naturally, its cemeteries are the final resting place for many of them. As one of the first public cemeteries in Lisbon, Prazeres Cemetery became a prestigious burial place, chosen by aristocratic families and housing many notable Portuguese figures from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Some remains, like those of the poet Fernando Pessoa, the writer Aquilino Ribeiro or the Fado singer Amália Rodrigues., were later moved to the National Pantheon or the Jerónimos Monastery. Artists and writers are especially honored at the Prazeres Cemetery, with dedicated plots and monuments. Prazeres also has public monuments honoring firefighters and police officers (PSP), and features work by prominent Portuguese sculptors, architects, and stonemasons.
Cemetery address
Praça São João Bosco 5681350-297 Lisbon
Portugal
Contacts
Phone: +351 21 817 3780Basic data
Date of first burial: 1833Cemetery area: 12ha
Approximate number of graves.: more than 7.000 mausoleums, 1.500 perpetual graves and 5.000 municipal tombs
Approximate number of yearly burials: 150 burials and 350 ashes