Józsefváros and Ferencváros - The Rough Guide to Budapest - page 124

role of the police in the Communist period. To the left of the entrance is a display of uniforms
and memorabilia going back to Habsburg times, while to the right is a sad display depicting a
very 1960s-looking crime scene with a sign listing key points for trainee investigators, along
with detailed descriptions of more crimes than you would ever want to read about.
Kerepesi Cemetery
Kerepesi temető • VIII, Fiumei út 16 • Cemetery daily: April & Aug 7am-7pm; May-July 7am-8pm, Sept
7am-6pm; Oct-March 7.30am-5pm • Free • Funerary Museum Kegyeleti Múzeum • Mon-Fri 9am-5pm •
Free
Five minutes' walk from the Police History Museum, you'll find the Kerepesi Cemetery
(also knownas Nemzet Sírkert and Fiumei úti Sírkert). This is the Père Lachaise ofBudapest,
where the famous, great and not-so-good are buried. Vintage hearses and mourning regalia
in the Funerary Museum near the main gates illuminate the Hungarian way of death and
set the stage for the necropolis. In Communist times, Party members killed during the Upris-
ing were buried in a special plot near the entrance and government ministers in honourable
proximity to Kossuth, while leaders and martyrs who “lived for Communism and the People”
were enshrined in a starkly ugly Pantheon of the Working Class Movement ; some have
been removed by their relatives since the demise of Communism, and all the old Communist
sections are looking distinctly unkempt - in contrast to the area for 1956 insurgents. Party
leader János Kádár - who ruled Hungary from 1956 to 1988 - rates a separate grave, heaped
with plastic wreaths from admirers.
The florid nineteenth-century mausoleums of Hungarian historical giants Kossuth, Bat-
thyány and Deák are quite extraordinary, though no less ostentatious is the mausoleum of
József Antall, the first post-Communist prime minister of Hungary, who is honoured by a
bizarre allegorical monument with riders on horseback struggling out from under a sheet.
Many of Hungary's literary greats also rate spots here, including twentieth-century poets
Attila József and Endre Ady, and the writer Antal Szerb , who has a very humble grave on the
southern edge of the cemetery. Here, too, is the family tomb of Petőfi , though his own body
was never found. Other notables include the composer Erkel, the confectioner Gerbeaud and
three chess grandmasters whose tombs are engraved with the chess moves that won them
their titles.
Finally, don't miss the Art Nouveau funerary arcades, at the end of which (the novelist
Jókai's mausoleums) is the tomb of the diva LujzaBlaha , the “Nation's Nightingale”, whose
effigy is surrounded by statues of serenading figures.