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Glasnevin CemeteryGlasnevin Cemetery is the main Catholic cemetery in Dublin, the capital of Ireland.
Glasnevin Cemetery
The round tower (centre) stands over the tomb of Daniel O'Connell
Eamon de Valera's grave
His wife, Sinad, and son, Brian (who was killed in a horse-riding accident in 1936) are buried there also.
A close up view of the gravestone
Monument to Ireland's war dead in World War I
The monument lists those buried in the cemetery who were killed in Irish Regiments of the British Army during the First World War
Glasnevin gravestones
The picture shows a mid nineteenth century plain gravestone (centre) surrounded by versions of celtic crosses, which became the fashion in the late nineteenth century. Established in the middle of the 19th century to replace the old burial grounds within the city, Glasnevin Cemetery contains many historically interesting monuments as well as the graves of all of Ireland's most prominent revolutionary heroes - Charles Stewart Parnell and Daniel O'Connell as well as Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera and Constance Markiewicz a generation later. The cemetery also offers a fascinating view of the changing style of death monuments in Ireland over the last 200 years; from the austere simple high stone erections of the period up until the 1860s, to the elaborate celtic crosses of the nationalistic revival from the 1860s to 1960s, to the plain Italian marble of the late twentieth century. Nowadays, Glasnevin fascinates the visitor not only because of its historical graves, but also because of its unique atmosphere of unkept desolation and melancholy abandonment. It is a wasteland of greyish rubble, crumbling, listing, broken or fallen monuments and the occasional contemporary shabbiness that evokes a third-world air in the middle of the burgeoning Celtic Tiger capital. Glasnevin Cemetery reminds us how very recent Ireland's rise to economic power really is. As yet, the boom town Dublin has not found the time to prettify its past as it is represented at Glasnevin. Broken coverstones through which one may peer into the walled crypts make Glasnevin a memento mori that can no longer be found in most of the developed world's garden cemeteries that aim to pacify, hide and obliterate, not remember, death. Famous people buried in Glasnevin Cemetery External links Footnotes 1Harry Boland's death features in the film of Michael Collins' life made by Neil Jordan. In reality the manner of his death bore little relationship to the account portrayed in the film. 2Casement's remains (or what purported to be Casement's remains) were exhumed from their previous location in a British prison and returned to Ireland in 1965 where they were granted a state funeral. It has been suggested since that the remains are not Casement's, or rather are not only of Casement. According to reports, when the exhumation took place, it was impossible to clarify which bones belonged to Casement and which to other prisoners buried in the same site in the prison grounds. A set of bones was assembled, but it is not known whether any of Casement's bones were among them.
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