Olšany Cemetery

Olšany Cemetery, known in Czech as Olšanské hřbitovy, is a vast cemetery complex in the Žižkov district of Prague, Czech Republic. Its origins date to 1680, when land outside the city was acquired for the burial of victims of a major plague epidemic. Following reforms that prohibited burials within Prague, Olšany became the principal Catholic cemetery for the districts on the right bank of the Vltava in the late eighteenth century and subsequently expanded through a succession of adjoining burial grounds during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today the complex covers more than 50 hectares and is the largest burial ground in the Czech Republic, with an estimated two million people having been interred there over its history. Its landscape contains tens of thousands of graves, nearly 200 chapel tombs, extensive tree-lined avenues and numerous elaborate monuments, particularly from the Art Nouveau period. Important structures include the Church of St. Roch, the Central Ceremonial Hall, a former crematorium now used as the New Ceremonial Hall and the Orthodox Church of the Dormition. The scale of the cemetery and its mixture of woodland, monumental tombs and weathered historic graves have made it one of Prague’s most frequently used cemetery filming locations.

Olšany Cemetery has appeared in Ferat Vampire (1982), Náhrdelník (1992), From Hell (2001), Bad Company (2002), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), Hellboy (2004), Van Helsing (2004), Kriminálka Anděl (2008–), Wilsonov (2015), The Red Captain (2016), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) and Nosferatu (2024). Its graves, mausoleums, wooded paths and ceremonial buildings have represented locations in London, Venice, Moscow, Budapest, Riga, Bratislava and the fictional Central European city of Wilsonov, while several Czech productions have allowed the cemetery to appear as itself. The cemetery is particularly effective on screen because individual sections can look dramatically different, ranging from orderly avenues and monumental family tombs to overgrown areas resembling much older and more isolated burial grounds.

In Ferat Vampire (1982), originally released as Upír z Feratu, Olšany Cemetery appears when Dr. Marek, played by Jiří Menzel, secretly makes his way through the cemetery to the crematorium. Marek has become suspicious of the mysterious Ferat racing car after nurse Mima leaves his medical team to become its driver and another woman, Luisa Tomášová, is killed while driving it. Determined to examine Luisa’s body before it is cremated, he enters the cemetery and approaches the crematorium in an attempt to discover evidence supporting the increasingly extraordinary suggestion that the car is powered by human blood. The sequence uses the real cemetery and its former crematorium, connecting one of Prague’s historic funerary buildings directly with the film’s combination of medical investigation, technology and horror.

In Náhrdelník (1992), Olšany Cemetery appears in “Nový začátek”, episode 7 of the twelve-part historical drama. Ferdinand von Bruekner, played by Friedrich von Thun, watches from a distance as Konrád, the father of Josefína, is buried. The funeral takes place as the characters attempt to rebuild their lives following the devastation of the Second World War, with Josefína having lost her husband and struggling to support her daughter. Olšany provides the real cemetery setting for Konrád’s burial, while von Bruekner’s presence allows the scene to connect the funeral with relationships and events extending back through the earlier parts of the family saga.

In From Hell (2001), Olšany Cemetery represents a London cemetery during Inspector Frederick Abberline’s investigation of the Whitechapel murders in 1888. After the murder of Polly Nichols, played by Annabelle Apsion, Abberline, played by Johnny Depp, attends her funeral and attempts to obtain information from the other women who knew her. Polly’s friends are suspicious of the police and reluctant to cooperate, leaving Abberline to continue piecing together the connections between the murdered women and the increasingly organised nature of the killings. The old graves and dense vegetation of Olšany are used to create a Victorian London burial ground, one of numerous Prague locations transformed into nineteenth-century London for the Hughes brothers’ film.

In Bad Company (2002), Olšany Cemetery appears as itself during CIA agent Gaylord Oakes and Jake Hayes’s attempt to purchase a stolen nuclear weapon. Adrik Vas initially instructs Jake by telephone to meet him at “the Olsany Cemetery” in two hours. Oakes and Jake subsequently drive through the real cemetery, with Oakes commenting on the enormous number of people buried there and Jake jokingly wondering whether Vas is trying to send them a message. Before the exchange can take place, Vas telephones again and redirects them to another location. Olšany is therefore deliberately named within the film rather than disguised as another cemetery, and functions as a tense intermediate rendezvous designed to make it more difficult for the CIA to anticipate where the final nuclear-bomb transaction will occur.

In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), Olšany Cemetery represents a graveyard in Venice during the League’s confrontation with the Fantom. After the group prevents a chain of explosions from destroying the city, Allan Quatermain, played by Sean Connery, pursues the masked antagonist away from the main battle and into a cemetery. The two stalk one another among the graves before confronting each other directly. Quatermain discovers that the Fantom is actually M, the man who assembled the League, and that he is Professor James Moriarty. Moriarty wounds Quatermain before escaping, revealing that the League has been manipulated from the beginning so that he can steal their extraordinary abilities and technology. Although the surrounding Venice sequences were created through other Prague locations, sets and extensive visual effects, the cemetery confrontation itself was filmed among the real graves at Olšany.

In Hellboy (2004), Olšany Cemetery represents a cemetery outside Moscow during Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.’s search for Grigori Rasputin. After travelling to Russia, Hellboy, Liz Sherman, John Myers and the rest of the team need to locate Rasputin’s hidden mausoleum but have no reliable guide through the enormous burial ground. Hellboy opens the grave of Ivan Klimatovich and magically reanimates the corpse, which immediately complains about being disturbed. Hellboy climbs back out carrying Ivan on his back, and the corpse directs the group through the cemetery towards the correct mausoleum, telling them how many rows and feet remain before they reach it. Olšany supplies the atmospheric outdoor cemetery scenes, with its old graves and mausoleums convincingly transformed into a Russian burial ground, while additional mausoleum material and supernatural environments were assembled from sets and other Prague locations.

In Van Helsing (2004), Olšany Cemetery represents an old cemetery in Budapest associated with Dracula’s summer palace. After Van Helsing, played by Hugh Jackman, and Carl, played by David Wenham, escape an encounter with Aleera, they need somewhere to conceal Frankenstein’s Monster before exchanging him in an attempt to rescue Anna Valerious. They temporarily hide the Monster inside one of the tombs at the cemetery. The real graves and mausoleums of Olšany provide the foreground and immediate surroundings, while visual effects add the dramatic cliffs and distant castle landscape that make the location appear to occupy a much more spectacular position above Budapest. The sequence is therefore a combination of genuine Prague cemetery footage and digitally created Transylvanian-style scenery.

In Kriminálka Anděl (2008–), Olšany Cemetery has appeared repeatedly and in several episodes is central to the crime being investigated rather than simply providing a funeral backdrop. In “Tajné pohřby”, episode 12 of season 3, mourners attending the funeral of Bořivoj discover that another badly concealed corpse is already lying in the grave into which his coffin is about to be lowered. The detectives investigate the cemetery itself, its employees, graves and mausoleums and uncover evidence suggesting that unwanted bodies have secretly been buried there over a long period. Olšany returns in “Slečna Smrt”, episode 14 of season 4, when the strangled body of a young woman is discovered in a neglected section of the cemetery and the investigation develops connections with occultism and spiritualism. It is used again in “Vykradač hrobů”, episode 9 of season 5, when grave robber Pavel Nestor is found shot inside a grave he had been attempting to rob. Across these episodes, the series makes extensive use of real tombs, paths, walls and overgrown sections of Olšany while allowing the location to retain its actual identity as one of Prague’s major cemeteries.

In Wilsonov (2015), Olšany Cemetery represents the cemetery of the fictional Central European city of Wilsonov in 1919. FBI agent Aaron Food, played by Jiří Macháček, and police inspector Kvído Eisner, played by Vojtěch Dyk, are investigating a bizarre series of murders when their search leads them into the cemetery. They approach the monumental Lanna and Schebek family mausoleum, where they discover the body of pathologist Mitt. The investigation becomes even stranger when Mitt briefly returns to life before dying again, after which Food and Eisner find themselves trapped inside the tomb as it begins to fill with water. The real historic mausoleum provides the exterior of the fictional tomb, while the increasingly absurd events inside form part of the film’s deliberate mixture of detective mystery, supernatural parody and period comedy.

In The Red Captain (2016), originally released as Rudý kapitán, Olšany Cemetery substitutes for a cemetery in Bratislava shortly after the collapse of communist Czechoslovakia. Police detective Richard Krauz, played by Maciej Stuhr, is investigating the discovery of the remains of Karol Klokner, a former church sexton whose skull contains a nail driven through it. His investigation gradually exposes connections with interrogation methods used by the former Czechoslovak secret police. Krauz meets Marika Kovačičová, played by Zuzana Kronerová, beside Klokner’s grave near the cemetery wall. Although the story is set in Slovakia in 1992, the burial-ground scenes were filmed at Olšany in Prague, using the weathered walls, old graves and dense vegetation to represent the Bratislava cemetery connected with the victim’s past.

In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), Olšany Cemetery represents a cemetery in Riga, Latvia, in “The Whole World Is Watching”, episode 4 of the Marvel miniseries. Karli Morgenthau, played by Erin Kellyman, and fellow Flag Smasher Nico, played by Noah Mills, visit the cemetery to recover vials of the Super Soldier Serum that Karli has hidden inside a tomb. While they are there, Nico tells Karli that he remembers looking up to Captain America as a child and reassures her that the Flag Smashers’ cause has given displaced people something to believe in. The sequence uses the old graves and tombs of Olšany to establish the secluded hiding place for the remaining serum. It should not be confused with Donya Madani’s memorial service elsewhere in the same episode, which was filmed at another Prague location; Olšany is specifically the cemetery where Karli and Nico retrieve the serum.

In Nosferatu (2024), Olšany Cemetery represents the cemetery of the fictional German port city of Wisborg during the plague brought by Count Orlok. The production used the existing graves and vegetation but also constructed a large, partially collapsed tomb within the cemetery to extend its nineteenth-century Gothic appearance. After Orlok kills Anna Harding and her two young daughters, they are buried as the plague and supernatural terror overwhelm the city. Anna’s grief-stricken husband Friedrich, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, later returns to the cemetery despite being gravely ill himself and enters the Harding family tomb. Overcome by grief, he opens Anna’s coffin and lies with her body. Thomas Hutter, Dr. Sievers and Professor von Franz later discover Friedrich dead over his wife’s corpse before the bodies are burned. Olšany’s genuine funerary landscape and the specially constructed mausoleum therefore provide one of the film’s bleakest locations, turning a real Prague cemetery into the plague-ravaged burial ground of Wisborg.

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