A City of the Dead That Inspires the Living

Highgate Cemetery is the final resting place for about 170,000 Londoners, among them the famous, the infamous and the ordinary. Since the start of the pandemic, its leafy pathways have taken on new meaning for some in the city.

LONDON — Vines crawl up headstones, tipping them on their side. Roots overtake tombs as if reclaiming them for the earth. On one toppled cross, a message: “Peace, Perfect Peace.”

This is the final resting place for about 170,000 Londoners, among them George Eliot, Karl Marx and Henry Moore.

Perched on a steep hillside peering over the capital city, Highgate Cemetery, a Victorian graveyard that is still in use today, is a tangle of monuments partly engulfed by a forest that has sprung up around it.