AT A GLANCE
Why go?
On the quiet upper streets of historic Newport, Island Cemetery is far more than a burial ground—it is the city's open-air museum of the famous dead. Laid out on the high land ringing the older Common Burying Ground, this 19th-century garden cemetery holds the graves of naval heroes who opened Japan to the West, Gilded Age financiers who shaped New York, and the architects who built Newport's great houses.↗↗↗
Together with its colonial neighbor, the Common Burying Ground, Island Cemetery forms a single listing on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, with thousands of graves spanning three centuries. Yet it remains a living, working cemetery: shaded paths, sculpted monuments and a Gothic memorial chapel invite slow, reflective walks among the names that made Newport.↗↗↗
A Garden Cemetery Born of a Romantic Idea
Island Cemetery was created in 1836, when the city of Newport bought the elevated land to the north and east of its crowded colonial burying ground. This was the rural cemetery movement arriving in New England: inspired by Paris's Père Lachaise and Boston's Mount Auburn, designers began to lay graves out in park-like landscapes of trees, winding drives and varied elevations, turning burial places from feared churchyards into serene grounds meant for strolling and remembrance.
