In the past when a cemetery ran out of space and there were no more land to expand, a new cemetery was created by layering more soil over the old graves. This was what happened in the Old Jewish Cemetery, in the Jewish Quarter of Prague. Not once, or twice, but twelve times.
The Old Jewish Cemetery is among the oldest surviving Jewish burial grounds in the world. It was founded in the early 15th century, with the oldest gravestone dating back to 1439. The last burial took place in 1787. Between these two burials, a period of approximately 350 years, more than 100,000 people were interred here stacked on top of each other up to twelve layers deep.
Photo credit: Sarah Ackerman/Flickr
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