Zorgvlied

A cemetery laid out like a park

Zorgvlied is a cemetery on the Amsteldijk, on the west bank of the Amstel. It does not feel like the usual rows of stones. Paths curve, old trees stand in open lawns, and the graves sit in pockets of green. It is one of the best-known cemeteries in the Netherlands, mostly because so many writers, actors, musicians and artists are buried here. It is worth the walk for the quiet, the landscape and the stories carved into the monuments.

From country house to cemetery

The name comes from Zorgvliet, a country house on the Amstel that stood here from 1676. Hard times led to its sale, then to decay, and in the end the buildings were gone. The municipality of Nieuwer-Amstel, today Amstelveen, wanted to hold back Amsterdam's growth. It laid out a general cemetery on the old estate, and it opened on 1 November 1870.

The garden architect Jan David Zocher designed it in the English landscape style. His son Louis Paul Zocher extended it in 1892, and there were further extensions in 1900, 1919 and 1926. Leo van der Bijl designed the gates of 1926, and the atrium followed around 1930. Amstelveen still owns and runs the cemetery, even though the boundary changes of 1896 put it inside Amsterdam. It soon became the place where the Amsterdam elite chose to be buried. In 2008 the park, its paths, the gates and a number of graves were listed as national monuments.

Who lies here

The list is long. The writer Harry Mulisch is here, and so are the painter Constant Nieuwenhuys of Cobra, the photographer Eva Besnyö and the designer Wim Crouwel. The actor Louis Bouwmeester, the dramatist Herman Heijermans and the economist and banker Wim Duisenberg are buried here too. So are the rock and roll painter Herman Brood and Bobby Farrell, the singer of Boney M. Jo van Gogh-Bonger, who was Vincent's sister-in-law, rests here as well, which makes a good link to the Van Gogh Museum. The founder of the beer brand, Gerard Adriaan Heineken, is also buried here. If that name makes you curious, the Heineken Experience tells the other half of the story. Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, a Holocaust survivor who shared a camp with Anne Frank, lies here too. The Anne Frank statue at the Merwedeplein is one more way to approach that part of the city's history.

A broken column honours all the writers and poets who lie here.

What to look for

Start with the older monuments. Oscar Carré, who ran Circus Carré, has a mausoleum from 1891. The monument for Sophie de Vries dates from 1892, and the Dorrepaal family monument from 1886 carries a statue after a design by Frans Stracké.

Then notice how the newer parts differ. After Manfred Langer was buried in 1994, under a monument that shows him with a glass of beer in his hand, burials became more open and personal. A dispute over the grave of the artist Peter Giele led to a separate area called Paradiso, for monuments of unusual appearance or size. Giele's own resting place there is a capsule known as the Giele Skull.

The cemetery is divided into themed sections, and each stone has to suit the mood of its field. Look out for the small field for unborn children, with a ribbon carrying a line from a lullaby, and for the Indonesia field, which was consecrated with earth flown in from Java and the Puncak area. There is also a landing stage at the waterside, so that funeral processions can arrive by boat on the Amstel.

Walk slowly. Zorgvlied is still a place where people come to grieve, and that is part of why it feels as it does.