Five of the world's best graveyards to visit

Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the resting place of Eva Peron. Photo / Megan Singleton

Megan Singleton takes a look at five cities with graveyards worth seeing before you die.

I love wandering through cemeteries and imagining the deeds of those who lie under ornate marble or stone, and reading snippets of their legacy on a plaque.

1. Buenos Aires
Recoleta is an elaborate cemetery with even more ornate vaults than New Orleans. It's most famous as the final resting place of Eva Peron, but take a guided tour and learn about the girl whose coffin lid moved some days later. Scratch marks were found on its inside. Many political figures are here and it's actually a very restful place. Despite that story.

2. New Orleans
Because of the water table in New Orleans, bodies must be buried above ground. St Louis Cemetery Number 1 is where the Voodoo Queen lies with her simple white tomb covered in lipstick graffiti. Hers is a shrine, but so are the jazz musicians'. Nicolas Cage's pyramid vault probably will be too one day as the actor has his ready and waiting for him.

3. New Caledonia
Seven Kiwi sailors, 161 soldiers and 78 airmen and women who died in the Pacific between 1939 and 1945 lie in a cemetery for fallen Kiwi veterans about a two-hour drive north of Noumea. The beautifully kept cemetery, hidden behind majestic pine trees, is in Bourail. While there was no fighting in New Caledonia, their bodies were buried here, and each Anzac Day there is a dawn ceremony.

The New Zealand war cemetery in Bourail, New Caledonia. Photo / Supplied

4. Arlington
One of the most poignant sites to visit in Washington DC is Arlington Cemetery, just over the Potomac River behind the Lincoln Memorial. Established during the Civil War, it is a military cemetery with 70 sections sprawling over 250ha. The most famous spot is the Tomb of the Unknowns with a fulltime guard, day and night, year round, but you'll also find the eternal flame that burns for assassinated president John F. Kennedy at his memorial too.

5. Lima
Not actually a cemetery, but under the San Francisco church lie the bones of at least 25,000 people. Some say more like 70,000. The Catacombs of St Francis were only discovered in 1943. Visitors walk in single file past open bins of bones, all the way to the circular arrangement of skulls. Eerie and remarkable at the same time.

See Megan's post on Skulking around the cemetery in New Orleans here.