Prague Guide
Prague
Vyšehradský hřbitov (Vyšehrad Cemetery)
Opening time: daily: March, April & Oct 8am–6pm; May– Sept 8am–7pm; Nov– Feb 8am–5pm
Price: free
Website: www.slavin.cz
One of the first initiatives of the national revival movement was to establish the Vyšehradský hřbitov, which spreads out to the north and east of the church. It's a measure of the part that artists and intellectuals played in the foundation of the nation, and the regard in which they are still held, that the most prestigious graveyard in the city is given over to them: no soldiers, no politicians, not even the Communists managed to muscle their way in here (except on artistic merit).
To the uninitiated only a handful of figures are well known, but for the Czechs the place is alive with great names (there is a useful plan of the most notable graves at the entrance nearest the church). Ladislav Šaloun's grave for Dvořák, situated under the arches, is one of the more showy, with a mosaic inscription, studded with gold stones, glistening behind wrought-iron railings. Smetana, who died twenty years earlier, is buried in comparatively modest surroundings near the Slavín monument. The Prague Spring Festival begins on the anniversary of his death (May 12) with a procession from his grave to the Obecní dům.
The grave of the Romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha was the assembly point for the 50,000-strong demonstration on November 17, 1989, which triggered the Velvet Revolution. This was organized to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Nazi closure of all Czech higher education institutions in 1939.
The focus of the cemetery, though, is the Slavín monument, a bulky stele covered in commemorative plaques and topped by a sarcophagus and a statue representing Genius. It's the communal resting place of over fifty Czech artists, including the painter Alfons Mucha, the sculptors Josef Václav Myslbek and Ladislav Šaloun, the architect Josef Gočár and the opera singer Ema Destinnová.