Article: On the way to heaven - reflections on death and a funerary monument from the cemetery of pleasures

As we pass through the main entrance, we enter an imposing space, dignified, sacred, poetic, elegiac, romantic, of great respectability, where distinguished memories and powerful feelings are evoked, which we can find materialized in the white stone of its Monuments, in the constant epigraphic inscriptions we encounter, in the most diverse symbols, in its expressive statues, existing amidst an extraordinary atmosphere, scented by the gentle aroma of cypress trees (which appear to us with great evocative flames, pointing to the vastness of the blue sky) and softened by the song of various birds, such as beautiful blackbirds, which can also be appreciated in this authentic open-air Museum, in this surprising, enchanting, and fantastic place that is the, patrimonially rich, Cemetery of Prazeres, the former 19th-century necropolis of the Western area of Lisbon.
Text by ARTUR JORGE VIEIRA DE JESUS
Graduate in History and Senior Technician in Local Administration

Source: Solidarity City Magazine no. 27/28
Edition: SCML, 2016