Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery

The Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery (French Cimetière du Bois-de-Vaux) is the principal burial ground of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery
Cimetière du Bois-de-Vaux
Details
Established1922
Location
Route de Chavannes, Lausanne, Canton of Vaud
CountrySwitzerland
Size20 acres (8.1 ha)
WebsiteOfficial website

Laid out by the architect Alphonse Laverrière between 1922 and 1951,[1] the cemetery lies to the south of the town and has been designated as a cultural property of national importance (bien culturel suisse d'importance nationale).

Description

There is a long central avenue lined with two rows of lime trees, banks stocked with flowering plants, ponds with fish and water lilies, many benches, and forty kilometres of hedges. Together with thousands of trees they provide homes for many different birds, while the other wildlife living in the hedges and undeveloped parts of the cemetery includes badgers, foxes, squirrels and hedgehogs. The cemetery has enough room for 26,000 plots.[2]

When the city of Lausanne heard in 1929 that the American bishop Charles Brent had died in Lausanne and wished to be buried there, they offered a plot for his remains in the section of the Bois-de-Vaux cemetery reserved for distinguished foreigners.[3]

Notable graves

Royal graves
Grave of Queen Helen of Romania

Some members of the exiled Yugoslav royal family were initially buried here, but their remains were later moved to the mausoleum at Oplenac, Serbia, when allowed by the government in Belgrade:

Also, the Queen Mother of Romania, a first cousin and friend of Princess Olga, was buried in the cemetery in 1982, but in 2019 her remains were due to be moved to the Curtea de Argeș Cathedral in Romania:[9]

  • Grave of Gabrielle «Coco» Chanel
  • Grave of Pierre de Coubertin
  • Firefighters' monument
  • Water feature
  • Arrangement of graves
  • There are many trees

Notes
  1. Le cimetière du Bois-de-Vaux (in French) at lausanne.ch, accessed 3 March 2019
  2. Bois-de-Vaux cemetery at lausanne-tourisme.ch/en, accessed 3 March 2019
  3. Alexander Clinton Zabriskie Bishop Brent, crusader for Christian unity (1948), p. 196.
  4. Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire (2010), p. 245
  5. David Arscott, The Olympics, A Very Peculiar History (2011), p. 40
  6. William Wright, Michael Wright, All the Pain Money Can Buy: The Life of Christina Onassis William Wright, (2000), p. 199
  7. Swiss News (1998), p. 43: "Chanel's grave in the Bois de Vaux Cemetery, Lausanne, is in plot No. 130 0/9."
  8. Ricardo Mateos Sainz de Medrano, La Familia de la Reina Sofía : La Dinastía griega, la Casa de Hannover y los reales primos de Europa, Madrid, La Esfera de los Libros (2004, ISBN 978-8-4973-4195-0), p. 262
  9. Remains of Helen, Queen Mother of Romania to be moved to the new cathedral at Curtea de Argeş at historyofroyalwomen.com, accessed 12 March 2018
  10. Romania page at royaltombs.dk, accessed 12 March 2019

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