Colon Cemetey Stock Photography

Colon Cemetery is one of the great historical cemeteries of the world, and is generally held to be the most important in Latin America in historical and architectural terms, second is La Recoleta in Buenos Aires. It was built by the Galician architect Calixto Arellano de Loira y Cardoso, a graduate of Madrid’s Royal Academy of Arts of San Fernando, and who became Colón’s first occupant when he died before his work was completed. Yet for all its elegance and grandeur Colon Cemetery conceals as much as it displays. Empty tombs and desecrated family chapels disfigure the stately march of Cuban family memorials even in the most prominent of the avenues, and away from the central cross-streets, ruin.