Founded in 1833 to address the high mortality of a cholera epidemic, the Prazeres Cemetery is located on the western side of the city and was built around a hermitage dedicated to Our Lady of Prazeres. It has a beautiful view over Alcântara Vale, the 25th of April Bridge, and the Tagus river.
In 1838 the Municipality of Lisbon requested the regulations and map of the Père Lachaise Cemetery from the city of Paris and, the following year, started to sell plots of land for the building of family mausoleums in Prazeres. The influence of the Père Lachaise style is evident in the cemetery’s design.
Most of Lisbon’s aristocratic families of the 19th century bought plots in the cemetery, choosing the best artists and architects of the time to create their family mausoleums, resulting in beautiful works, rich with symbolism and art.
Many important personalities are buried here, such as the poet Fernando Pessoa, the fado singer Amália Rodrigues, the writer Aquilino Ribeiro, the painter Maluda, the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi, the artist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, the painter Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, and Portugal’s former President Mário Soares.
Through the glass doors of the mausoleums one can see the funeral decorations, flowers, stained glass windows, altars with photographs of the deceased and images of saints and, also on display, coffins. Made of expensive woods, carved, painted or decorated, with metal handles with funerary symbols, some mausoleums are like time capsules from the past.
In this cemetery one can find the Palmela Mausoleum, considered the largest private mausoleum in Europe, with capacity for 200 remains, designed by the Italian architect Giuseppe Cinatti for Pedro de Sousa Holstein, the 1st Duque of Palmela. Built in 1848 and comprised of a pyramid on top of a cubic underground crypt, this mausoleum rises in a separated plot, with a path flanked by cypress trees and the graves of the Palmela family servants. Inside, sculpted works by Italian neo-classical artist Antonio Canova, French artist Anatole Calmels and the Portuguese artists António Teixeira Lopes and Vitor Bastos, make this mausoleum a must see work in European funerary art.