The Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague, Czech Republic

This really is one of the most amazing burial grounds I
have ever seen. In the Josefov quarter of Prague, it
dates back to the fifteenth century! 1478 in fact. People had
to be buried on top of each other due to lack of space.
It really is in a small area. There are about 12 layers,
and over 12,000 gravestones. 100,000 people are thought
to have been buried here, the last one being Moses Beck in
1787. The most prominent graves for Jewish people are
those of Mordechai Maisel and Rabi Low (sorry I missed out on
snapping this one myself!)
You can only visit it as part of the whole Jewish Tour,
which costs around a tenner, if my memory serve me right.
I make no apologies for including so many snaps that look
so similar. Just look at them in awe.
(There are two other Jewish burial grounds in Prague.
The remains of the Zizkov Jewish Cemetery stands at
the foot of the Telvision tower there. I've seen it in the
past from up above, but never set foot in it. The other, a
bit further out of town, in the Jewish New Cemetery, in
the Praha 3 district, this is much larger, and much less
visited. I never had time to fit this in on my trip, but
have been there before. I will snap it for you when I
return to Prague next year.





















Thes bit of rock are rather old...

This plaque explains.

















I was lucky I was 'out of season' in late October, and
there weren't too many tourists to crush the experience.



In the Jewish burial tradition, stones and paper, are
left on top of the headstones. I don't actually know
what this signifies and would be interested to find out.