Central Cemetery: “City of the Dead” opens

You're standing at what Viennese call the City of the Dead. The massive gates and endless rows of graves stretch across 2.5 square kilometers in Simmering, far from the city center. When it opened on November 1, 1874, people were furious.

The problem was distance. Five miles from central Vienna, way out in what felt like the middle of nowhere. Who wants to travel that far to visit a grave?

But the real controversy was bigger. The city wanted this cemetery to be interdenominational. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, all buried on the same ground. In 1874, that was radical. Catholic leaders exploded when they heard the city refused a proper Catholic consecration but gave money for a Jewish section.

So on October 31, 1874, at dawn, Mayor Baron Cajetan von Felder and Cardinal Joseph Othmar Rauscher quietly inaugurated the cemetery. No ceremony. No crowds. They opened it in secret to avoid a riot.

The first person buried here was Jacob Zelzer. Fifteen others followed that day. His grave still exists near the administration building at the cemetery wall.

The city built this place expecting Vienna to grow to four million inhabitants. Over 3 million people are buried here now.