Kramsach Cemetery Museum

Can a cemetery be funny? This question is answered by the Cemetery Museum (Museumsfriedhof Kramsach), an open-air museum with a collection of witty epitaphs and beautiful wrought-iron grave crosses. Due to the fact that former life was very hard and death was a common companion, ironic and funny epitaphs were written, to handle the destiny in a special way.

These epitaphs were done by the local decorative painters, called "Tuifelemaler" ("Tuifel" = dialect for "devil"). The metalsmith and stone carver Hans Guggenberger from Kramsach founded the museum in 1965/66 after decades of collection activities in North Tyrol, South Tyrol, Salzburg and Bavaria. So the "Jolly Cemetery without any dead persons" accrued: 60 funny epitaphs and crave crosses from the 18th and 19th century can be admired, but nobody has been buried here. Today, more than 200,000 people visit the Kramsach Cemetery Museum every year.

The gravestones are elaborately kept and restored by the Tyrolean Museum Cemetery Association every year, a new are has been added in 2022. There is another "Jolly Cemetery" in Sapanta in Romania, the "Cimitirul Vesel". It is historically documented that the use of bizarre epitaphs startet to spread in the 17th century from England to the mainland, and then to America and Australia.