Csernus Lukács - Triff Zsigmond: The Cemeteries of Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)
district of the city. From here across cabbage fields a dirt road, practically impassable in rainy weather, led to the newly appointed cemetery. Two buildings, the Slovak church and the Makkhetes tavern, stood along the road, and you were also obliged to walk past the city gallows. The oldest Jewish cemetery on the Pest side is described by János Keresztély Engel in his Monumenta Cln- garica, a work published in 1805. In his account moss- covered tombstones dated to a period two centuries earlier were found at the foot of the Újhegy hill in the 18th century. The place name suggests that the location of the cemetery should be looked for in Kőbánya. In later times the Jewish graveyard was next to the plague cemetery, which lay in the place of today’s Vámház körút. Later again it was located in the neighbourhood of Váci út Cemetery. The Kerepesi Cemetery This cemetery was opened on 15 June 1847. Nevertheless, the first funeral here took place a long time after this day because the inhabitants of the city had an aversion to the huge new cemetery, which they also found difficult to get to. The identity of the first person buried here on 1 April 1849 remains unknown. In 1861, the cemetery was surrounded with a high stone wall. Later, a row of vaults was built alongside the wall, which were then sold at a good price. The vaults enjoy protection under the historic monuments act. For the purposes of funeral services, a small chapel, a building still in use, was erected at the main gate in 1857. A funeral parlour, with a dissecting room next to it, was built to plans by Hugó Máltás in 1880. In 1885 the municipal authorities designated the Kerepesi Cemetery as a burial ground of honour, where prominent figures of the Hungarian nation could be laid to rest. (This decision complied, albeit in part, with an idea of István Széchenyi put forward much earlier. In one of his works published in 1843, the patriotic count proposed the establishment of a National Hall of Glory, or pantheon, on Gellért Hill.) However, the practice of burying anybody without regard to his or her distinctions was not yet abandoned. The burial of the first person of fame Mihál Vörösmarty, as his name is carved on the tombstone, took place in 1855. Tens of thousands assembled for the funeral of the great poet, facing the dragoons lined up opposite and embodying the dictatorship to which the country was subjected at the time. Vörösmarty was allotted a burial place in a side section of the cemetery and no funeral address 10
