A network of big avenues cut through the cemetery and long, metre-high hedges subdivide the area.
Concentrated Denmark
Trees, plants and bushes are used to create a wide range of separate "grave spaces", each with their unique expression - from the well-nursed garden to the forest-like area. Each space contains an interpretation of a characteristic part of the Danish landscape. There are ditches, flowering meadows, wood clearances, fields, overgrown slopes etc.
Mariebjerg Cemetery is a demonstration of how a continuous whole can be created despite people's different wishes for their burial place. The solution is the varying types of defined spaces for different types of graves. At the same time, the spaces create intimacy around the burial sites.
Green modernism
With its ambition to create order and coherence between the cemetery and the individual burial sites, Mariebjerg Cemetery is part of the modern breakthrough in Denmark. The cemetery has been copied in many other places in the country. It has achieved great international recognition and is considered a major work in European garden architecture.
Democratic burial
At its inauguration in 1936, Mariebjerg represented a radical confrontation with the traditional way of thinking and designing a cemetery. Particularly since the individual burial place became less important at Mariebjerg Cemetery, because the grave sites must adapt to a common plan.
For this reason it has been called a 'democratic cemetery'. There are no ostentatious or self-orchestrated burial monuments here - in death we are all equal.
Jeppe Villadsen is a freelance journalist and editor of the magazine KBH.
Mariebjerg Cemetary
photo: Malene Hauxner