The Old (Talkšos) Cemetery of Šiauliai City

The cemetery is located near Talkša lake and covers the area of 4,46 hectares. The cemetery consists of three parts: Catholic, Orthodox and Free Thinkers’ cemetery.
Considering its age, the old cemetery is not the oldest parish cemetery. The oldest cemetery was located around the Cathedral and on its slopes.
The new cemetery further away from the church was set up due to lack of space in the existing cemetery and sanitary circumstances. The new cemetery was built further away from the city on the small hill known as St.John’s Hill.
It is believed that mass burying in the cemetery started in 1831, when cholera raved in the city. One of the oldest tombstones in the cemetery is located on the elevation of the old part of the cemetery, not far from the former chapel. The table says that the year of death is 1801.
There used to be a cross-shaped wooden chapel on the hill. It burned around 1970.
One of the oldest groups of graves is family vaults. Quite many of them remained on the slopes of the hill in the old cemetery, around the former chapel. Because there are almost no surviving inscriptions on facades of vaults, we can only guess that first vaults could have been equipped at the junction of 18 and 19 centuries, while the majority of them was equipped in the second half of the 19 century. Read More