Cementerio de Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis is San Juan’s most picturesque cemetery, wedged cliffside between the old city walls and the Atlantic Ocean. You’ve probably seen it in postcards or guidebooks, with a red-domed chapel in the middle and rows of bright white tombs spilling down toward the sea.
Krista and I got there early, before the tour groups and the blaze of midday sun, and still the chickens had already claimed the place. Wild, erratic—possibly immortal?—they darted between tombs and scratched at the base of marble statues with the same chaotic energy you see at airport baggage carousels. A tiny dog—so over it already—moved from shady spot to shady spot to avoid their constant heckling.
And the cemetery? Breathtaking. Not quietly lovely or sweetly solemn—capital-D Dramatic.
It sits just outside the walls of Old San Juan, perched dramatically on a narrow bluff between El Morro fortress and the Atlantic Ocean. If cemeteries could gloat, this one would. White headstones fill the space in tidy, sun-bleached rows, all facing the water as if awaiting some triumphant second coming—or at least a decent regatta. The chapel in the center adds a pop of color and drama like a red velvet rosette on a white layer cake. From here, you can get a higher view of the sea of gravestones, catch a little breeze, and enjoy some shade.
At one time, visitors would have entered through a neoclassical portico facing the city, passing beneath sculpted saints and carved cornices into the world of the dead. But the cemetery has grown—spread and reshaped itself over time—and now the portico sits like an architectural orphan, stranded between two halves of the grounds. It’s still noble, though, framed by faux merlons that echo the nearby fort and guarded by a lonely sentry box on the wall, as if the dead still need watching.
Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis was built in 1863 and named for an Italian Carmelite mystic whose reputation for ecstatic visions and fierce devotion made her a favorite of the Spanish church in the age of empire. Its layout follows the old Catholic tradition of burying the dead outside the city walls facing the next world. It’s a short symbolic leap from here to eternity—especially with the waves crashing against the rocks below.
The setting reminded me of Waverley Cemetery in Sydney, another stunner with a prime oceanfront location, though this one is much smaller. But where Waverley feels solemn and tidy in its Anglican restraint, Santa María is exuberant, flamboyant, and a little unruly. You don't just visit it—you experience it. While dodging a few roosters protecting their hens.
Some of Puerto Rico’s most storied residents are buried here—nationalists, poets, politicians, composers. It’s a veritable VIP section for Puerto Rican identity. Pedro Albizu Campos, the Harvard-educated firebrand of the independence movement, is here—his legacy still prickly, still powerful. Nearby lies José de Diego, whose tomb is topped with a magnificently mustachioed bust and an inscription of his own poem, ‘To the Shield,’ in which he asks to be laid to rest covered with Puerto Rico’s coat of arms as a gesture of loyalty, identity, and unresolved hope. Rafael Hernández, the beloved composer whose boleros still echo across the Spanish-speaking world, is here, too. Somewhere.
By the time we reached the far edge of the cemetery, we were not looking forward to hiking back up the hill to town. Even the chickens had slowed down. The little dog had given up seeking shade and collapsed at the portico's base.
We’d lingered not out of morbidity but because this was one of the few places in San Juan where the full sweep of Puerto Rican history felt both vivid and still. The wind off the Atlantic was steady. The graves shimmered in the light. And the whole thing—El Morro’s turrets behind us, the chapel ahead, the ocean roaring beyond—felt like the most dramatic stage imaginable for remembering.
If I end up buried here one day, let the record show I requested the view. Not the chickens so much—though I suppose they come with the real estate.
Write a comment