Powazki Cemetery: History, Famous Graves and Visiting Hours

Founded in 1790 and consecrated on 20 May 1792, Old Powazki is the cemetery of Warsaw in the way Pere Lachaise is the cemetery of Paris. Over 43 hectares it holds the graves of more than a million people - statesmen, scientists, artists and ordinary Varsovians across more than two centuries.

The Avenue of the Meritorious

The central Aleja Zasluzonych (Avenue of the Meritorious) was laid out in the 1920s for the most distinguished dead. Here you will find Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist; the singer Czeslaw Niemen; and the tenor Jan Kiepura. Elsewhere in the cemetery lie the parents of Fryderyk Chopin, the poet Zbigniew Herbert, the composer Witold Lutoslawski, the film director Krzysztof Kieslowski and Irena Sendler, who saved Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.

An open-air museum of funerary art

Between the famous names, Powazki is a gallery of 19th- and early-20th-century tomb sculpture: family chapels, angel figures and carved crosses under old trees. The cemetery is busiest around All Saints Day on 1 November, when the graves are covered in candles - see our guide to All Saints cemetery transport in Warsaw for that week.

Visiting

The cemetery sits in the Powazki area of Wola, with the main gate on Powazkowska Street. According to the cemetery, the gates are open roughly 7:00-20:00 in the summer season and 7:00-18:00 in winter; check posted times at the gate on the day. Entry is free. Give it at least an hour, and pick up the plan of notable graves at the gate if one is available.