Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery, National historic cemetery in Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal, Canada
Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery covers 139 hectares on the northwest slope of Mount Royal, with more than 55 kilometres of lanes and over 65,000 monuments. It holds 71 family vaults and several mausoleums, including La Pietà, which contains a life-sized marble copy of Michelangelo's Pietà. The grounds run along Côte-des-Neiges Road.
The cemetery was founded in 1854 by Montreal's Catholic community on land purchased from a physician. An architect who had visited cemeteries in Boston and New York designed the layout with curving paths modeled after rural resting places.
The name refers to the legend of Our Lady of the Snows: in 352 a Roman aristocrat and his wife dreamed that Mary asked them to build a chapel, and snow fell on the site of Santa Maria Maggiore. The cemetery was long the burial ground of French Canadians, and gravestones carry Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Greek Orthodox, Polish, Ukrainian and Huron motifs.
Visitors can walk year-round, with paths cleared in winter and maple leaves covering the slopes in autumn. Main roads are accessible by car, while narrower trails are explored on foot.
At one point the cemetery shares an open passage with neighboring Mount Royal Cemetery, where both grounds maintain military graves. Over 440 soldiers from Commonwealth countries are buried there or named on memorial stones.
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