The eeriest and most beautiful cities of the dead
We run a fair number of city lists on Yahoo Homes: 20 great cities to live in, cities with the most dangerous diets, the most exciting small cities. With Halloween approaching, we thought we'd try a variation on the theme: the necropolis, or city of the dead.
Some are beautiful, some are moving, some simply profoundly strange. In our research, we found clusters of ancient tombs that may bear evidence of a little cult activity (creepy) and early erotic art (oh?). Other examples are modern -- not necessarily hewing to a strict definition of a necropolis as ancient, removed from a (living) city center, elaborately ornamented, but nonetheless seeming in one way or another to be monumental and therefore deserving of the label "city of the dead."
And although these are cities of the dead, not all of them are dead cities.
In a large slum ringing the outskirts of Cairo, poor residents eat, work and sleep among the dead, cooking on stoves an arm’s length from tombs or sleeping in bedrooms next to their dead ancestors. In Colma, California, the city’s nearly 2,000 residents are outnumbered by the dead about 1,000 to one. About three-quarters of the city’s land is occupied by the dead through the city’s 17 cemeteries. Colma has embraced its unique populace though, and even adopted the lighthearted slogan "It's great to be alive in Colma."
More spooky tales from Yahoo Homes:
• A gallows site and other haunted homes for sale right now
• Trulia's homebuyer terror survey
• Kooky! Ooky! Pay a call on the Addams family mansion
• Ozzie and Harriet's haunted house remodeled, spirit gone
This is a video of a prospective necropolis, described in our slideshow of the eeriest and most beautiful cities of the dead:
