The General Cemetery is a fifteen-minute walk northwest of the city centre, and it operates on a scale and with a logic that is entirely its own. The standard burial here is not underground but in a niche in a wall — a small sealed compartment in a stack of identical compartments that rises four or five storeys high. These walls of niches are arranged in grid-like blocks with named lanes between them, so navigating the cemetery has the same character as navigating a neighbourhood. Wealthier families have invested in elaborate mausoleums that function like small buildings, with stained glass, interior chapels, and carved stone facades. The contrast between the modest stacked niches and the architectural ambition of the mausoleums is extreme and very instructive about La Paz's social geography.
The cemetery is open to visitors and receives a steady stream of locals maintaining graves, tending flowers, and keeping the lanes tidy. On ordinary days it is peaceful and interesting. On All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day (November 1st and 2nd), it transforms: the lanes fill with people, vendors sell bread figures (t'antawawas) shaped like humans and animals, and families set up what amount to small picnics beside the niches of relatives, bringing the foods the deceased liked in life. Brass bands circulate. The noise and the crowds are extraordinary in the best possible way. If you are in La Paz at the start of November, do not miss it.