The story of this place
Forbidden from burying their dead elsewhere, Prague's Jews used this single small plot from about 1439 until 1787. With no room to expand, graves were layered on top of one another — in places twelve bodies deep — and old headstones were raised to the new surface, which is why some 12,000 tumbling stones now crowd a space meant for a fraction of that number, over perhaps 100,000 burials. Among them lies the great scholar Rabbi Judah Loew, the Golem's supposed maker, whose tomb is heaped with pebbles and paper prayers. The mounded, tilting field, shaded by elder trees, is one of the most affecting sights in Europe and a rare survivor of the ghetto's demolition.