Ondrejsky cemetery

Ondrejsky cemetery - darkometer rating : 2 - A relatively small, no longer in use cemetery near the centre of Slovakia 's capital Bratislava . It functions more like park these days, and the graves are no longer tended much, but you can spot a plethora of intriguing details of darkly Gothic beauty and aesthetic decay. > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos What there is to see: If you stumbled into this little green oasis in the middle of Bratislava without realizing it was a cemetery you'd be forgiven. It does indeed look more like a regular park at first. But then you realize all those stone monuments and crosses. Most of the graves are these days only marked by such isolated stones/crosses, only a few still have their full rectangular grave shape. Almost all the graves have clearly not been tended in a long time. Many have disappeared altogether, so that there are empty areas punctuated by just a few isolated monuments/headstones. You can guess why the cemetery is in the state it is by checking the names on the tombstones: many are German or Hungarian and date back to times when Bratislava was dominated by Germany / Austria and/or Hungary . Since those days ended a long time ago and the descendants of the German and Hungarian deceased have long since departed (or were kicked out after WWII ), there is probably no one left with much of an interest in caring for these graves. A few graves and tombstones are still in situ but are positively crumbling. One I found cordoned off and its headstone feebly propped up by a wooden pole to stop it collapsing altogether. Intriguingly, there was one of the cemetery's cats sitting timidly by this grave and when I got nearer it quickly vanished into (!!) the grave.