Highgate Cemetery

Karl Marx, George Eliot, and ivy-strangled Victorian mausoleums in two haunted hilltop graveyards

Address Swain's Lane, London N6 6PJ
Admission Ticketed (both East and West sides)
Website highgatecemetery.org

Opened in 1839 as part of the Victorian "Magnificent Seven" private cemeteries built to relieve the overcrowded London parish graveyards, Highgate spreads across two wooded hillsides on either side of Swain's Lane in north London. The West side is the older and more atmospheric — the Egyptian Avenue, the Circle of Lebanon, and a labyrinth of toppled, ivy-wrapped tombs visible only on guided tours. The East side, which you can walk freely, holds the most famous graves: Karl Marx beneath a large bronze head, George Eliot, Douglas Adams, Malcolm McLaren, and a long roll of Victorian and later notables.

The whole site is a nature reserve as well as a cemetery, with foxes, deer, and a remarkable variety of birds in the spring. It is high enough to give views across central London on a clear day; combine it with a walk on Hampstead Heath, which runs along the next hill west.

Tickets must be booked in advance; the West-side tours sell out weeks ahead in summer.

things to do sight cemetery historic site
A story
In the 1970s, Highgate became briefly famous as the site of a supposed vampire — the "Highgate Vampire" — and rival self-styled vampire hunters held armed nocturnal vigils among the tombs. Court cases, broken graves, and at least one act of grave-desecration followed before the press tired of the story. The cemetery had been semi-derelict and overgrown for decades by then; the publicity actually helped fund the restoration that has since reopened most of it.

Other places in Things to Do in London