Pęksów Brzyzek Cemetery in Zakopane

This small cemetery on Kościeliska Street holds around 500 graves, and roughly half belong to the people who created the legend of Zakopane: writers, painters, doctors, mountain guides and TOPR rescuers. Almost every headstone is a work of art in its own right – a carved cross, a miniature wayside shrine, a painting on glass or a stone form with highland ornament. It is the town's oldest burial ground and one of the most important places of memory in the Polish mountains.

History: from village cemetery to Cemetery of the Meritorious

The cemetery was founded in 1851 by Zakopane's first parish priest, Fr Józef Stolarczyk, next to a wooden church built a few years earlier. The land was donated by a local farmer, Jan Pęksa, and "brzyzek" is the highland dialect word for a steep bank above a stream – hence the name. The gate was designed by Stanisław Witkiewicz, creator of the Zakopane Style, who is buried just a few steps away.

After the massacres of demonstrators in Warsaw and Vilnius in 1861, the Homolacs family put up a cross and plaque here in memory of the victims. A year later the Austrian district authorities in Nowy Targ ordered the inscription removed. A new cemetery opened on Nowotarska Street in 1908, and at the end of 1931 the old one was listed as a historic monument and renamed the Cemetery of the Meritorious. Since then every burial has needed the conservator's approval, and only people of special merit for Zakopane, the Tatras and the Podhale region are laid to rest here.

What to see

• Witkacy's symbolic grave next to his mother's – on the right just inside the entrance.
• The graves of Władysław Orkan, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer and Tytus Chałubiński side by side, with the storyteller Sabała and Stanisław Witkiewicz behind them.
• The writer Kornel Makuszyński, ski jumper Stanisław Marusarz and his sister Helena Marusarzówna.
• Further in: Antoni Kenar, Karol Stryjeński, Władysław Hasior, and Zofia Radwańska-Paryska and Witold Paryski, authors of the great Tatra encyclopaedia.
• Symbolic memorials to Himalayan climber Maciej Berbeka, ethnographer Bronisław Piłsudski and General Mariusz Zaruski, plus plaques for the composers Karol Szymanowski and Mieczysław Karłowicz.
• The stone wall bearing the names of the Tatra couriers who crossed the mountains during the Second World War, with reliefs added in the 1950s.

Interesting facts

Many of the sculpted memorials came from the workshop of Władysław Hasior while he was still teaching at Zakopane's art school – his works include the monuments on the graves of Maria Witkiewiczowa and Józef "Pimek" Fedorowicz. For the cemetery's centenary the wall was restored and given an inscription describing the homeland as "land and graves", which still greets visitors today. The newest memorial dates from 2025: a plaque honouring the Zamoyski family, who did much for Zakopane and the Tatras.

Tripto tip

The cemetery sits right next to the Old Church of 1847 and the Gąsienica Chapel from the early 19th century, regarded as the oldest religious building in Zakopane. You can see all three in about an hour and then continue along Kościeliska Street to the Koliba villa and its Museum of the Zakopane Style. The church and cemetery are open to visitors outside Mass times, and since 2014 the parish has charged a visitor fee that goes towards conserving the headstones. This is a working cemetery: keep your voice down, do not step on the graves and watch your footing on the uneven, sloping paths, especially after rain.