Dark tourism? / Antakalnis Cemetery, Vilnius
According to Vilnius Official Tourism website this is the pantheon of the Republic of Lithuania. Renowned artists and scientists from all periods of time rest in the cemetery here. Freedom defenders who died on 13 January 1991 and border guards killed in Medininkai on 31 July 1991 have found their last refuge here. They are honoured by the monument of S. Kuzma “Pieta”. Antakalnis Cemetery is the largest public cemetery in Vinius and brings together much of the city’s modern city. Statues and memorial stones cover the verdant landscape, the crosses and tombs inscribed in Lithuanian, Russian and Polish. The main path leads past a wave of identical Stone crosses dedicated to Polish soldiers who died during World War I. At the heart of the cemetery is a sweeping semicircular memorial cut into the hillside for the 14 civilians who were killed while defending the TV Tower and the Parliament in 1991. A path to the right to the cemetery entrance leads to Soviet-era memorials. Large Soviet soldiers guard the no-longer burning eternal flame. Among the more notable recent additions is a large patch of grass surrounded by a tiny concrete wall and containing the remains of the Napoleonic sodiers discovered in the city in 2002.