Laeken Cemetery, Belgium

The Laeken Cemetery (French: Cimetière de Laeken, Dutch: Begraafplaats van Laken), located in Laeken in the northern part of Brussels, is one of the major cemeteries in Belgium.

Description

The cemetery houses very fine examples of nineteenth-century funerary art and also features an original bronze cast of Auguste Rodin's Thinker, purchased in 1927 by the antiquarian and art collector Josef Dillen to use as his own memorial. Next to the entrance, there is a small museum dedicated to the sculptor Ernest Salu (1845-1923) and his successors. Many of the monuments that embellish the cemetery are products of the Salu workshop.

The adjacent Church of Our Lady of Laeken is the site of the Royal Crypt of Belgium, consecrated in 1872, and the resting place of the Belgian royal family.

Notable interments

• Alphonse Balat, architect
• Charles Auguste de Bériot, violinist and composer
• Michel de Ghelderode, writer
• Louis Ghémar, photographer (1819-1873), in a tomb designed by sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse
• Camille Jenatzy, race-car driver
• Fernand Khnopff, painter
• Maria Malibran, opera singer, with a work by sculptor Guillaume Geefs
• Joseph Poelaert, architect
• Louis-Joseph Seutin, surgeon
• Léon Suys, architect