Night tours of historic Latin American cemetery prove to be a popular tourist attraction

The Presbitero Maestro cemetery in Lima, Puru, is a National Historic Monument that attracts tourists interested in the elaborate mausoleums and tombs created by French and Italian sculptors.  According to AFP News, the site is now offering visitors "spooky night-time tours by torchlight."  The World Monuments Fund remarks that these night tours are very popular.

The Fund explains that the cemetery was commissioned by Viceroy Fernando de Abascal and built between 1805 and 1808.  It was the first municipal cemetery in Latin America. Many important historical figures are entombed there, and the Neoclassical complex is still in use and contains one of the largest collections of nineteenth-century European marble sculpture in Latin America, the Fund reports.

The site was designated a National Historic Monument in 1972, but the sculptures and mausoleum in the cemetery are threatened by aging, pollution from nearby factories, population pressure, and vandalism.

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D. Beeksma

One of the growing crowd of American "nones" herself, Deborah is a prolific writer who finds religion, spirituality and the impact of belief (and non-belief) on culture inspiring, fascinating and at times, disturbing. She hosts the God Discussion show and handles the site's technical work. Her education and background is in business, ecommerce and law.

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