My View of St. Roch's Campo Santo Cemetery

  To continue my series on New Orleans' Cities of the Dead, we'll take a look at a lesser known cemetery in the Big Easy.  St. Roch's Campo Santo is a little off the beaten path for the tourists, and is unique among its companion cemeteries.  The two cemeteries dedicated to St. Roch are directly across the street from each other.  The first was dedicated in 1875.  Its unusual patron is a Saint that very few American Catholics outside of New Orleans are familiar with.  This French wayfarer is linked to a great outpouring of miraculous healings back in the early 1300's.  The stories center mostly around epidemics such as the Black Plague.  Father Thevis arrived in New Orleans during a Yellow Fever outbreak in the 1860s.  He dedicated his life to caring for the sick and led a campaign to build a chapel and its subsequent cemetery to St. Roch.

  Here you can see the much larger chapel built in the second cemetery.  The first chapel is famed for its "Threshold of Healing" room, just off the side of the chapel, where pilgrims bring plaster copies of anatomical parts, called ex-votos, which represent the healing they received while calling upon St. Roch to intervene for them.  This oddities room draws the few tourists who are willing to step off that beaten path.  Again, there are warnings about the neighborhood around these cemeteries and I would only suggest that as with any big city you visit during the middle of the day and be aware of your surroundings.

  Also in the second cemetery, you'll see this larger section of coping tombs.  All of St. Roch's is far more rigidly designed than most of the other cemeteries, and it is well cared for.  It is said that it is one of the busiest cemeteries on All Saints' Day, which is the traditional time for families to visit and perform maintenance on the crypts.

  This picture here is another example of the orderly design of the cemetery .  The avenues are wide, and the monuments are not only clean and free of wear, they are also intact.  You'll see almost no evidence of grave-robbing.  The site it known to have had several long term caretakers who dedicated a great deal of their time to the care of St. Roch's.

  In the original cemetery, the wall vaults are interspersed with these alcoves wherein you'll find life-sized statues imported from Italy, which depict the fourteen stations of the cross.  Here you see the 14th station depicting Jesus being laid in his tomb.  I hope to return to St. Roch's one day and photograph each of the stations.  If I do, I'll be sure to post them for all to see.

  This is the central courtyard of the original cemetery.  The Gothic design of the chapel is based on the Campo Santo de'Tedeschi, a church and cemetery beside Saint Peter's which was built for Germans living in Rome.  The statue of the child in front of the cross was once rumoured to be the first corpse interred in the cemetery wrapped in plaster, though this was not true.  It is a full body ex-voto that a mother donated in thanks to St. Roch for healing her sick child.

  St. Roch's does not offer the same atmosphere as the older, more worn cemeteries near the French Quarter, but its room of plaster body parts has a touch of the macabre that ensures this cemetery its membership in the mysterious world of New Orleans' Cities of the Dead.  What is clearly evident here is the care and love which has been poured into these grave sites throughout the years.

A View of New Orleans' other Cities

St. Patrick's Number One

Yes, New Orleans is known for its French Quarter.  This city, within the city, is a favorite of party-goers, sight-seers, and photographers both near and far.  But New Orleans also has a number of other cities tucked within the city that are just as unique as the French Quarter: the Cities of the Dead.

Lafayette Number One

I first began touring them many years ago and immediately became caught up in their history and inspiration.  Many of you might have read one or two of the stories I wrote that are set within these fascinating little cities.  I have written many more of them, and an anthology of them will be available later this year.  I'm not sure why, but the moment I set foot in the first one I visited, Lafayette Number One, I could not stop thinking about them.  They are, at times, beautiful, moving, sad, impressive, and stirring.  They are, in fact, just like the many towns and cities that fill in the map of our world.  Some of them are run down, others are immaculate.  They can be crowded, with crooked streets and confusing paths.  They can have wide avenues.  Some of them have rich neighborhoods, rowhouses, and even slums.  They even have apartment houses.

St. Louis Number One

Tucked inside these little cities are generations of families that all have one thing in common: they are filled with residents who no longer have opportunity.  Who no longer have dreams and grand schemes.  Though they might have had these at one time, they do not now.  Their stories have been written.  Yet here they all lie, in houses as varied in death as in life.  What they all have in common now is their shared knowledge of what comes after.  They know what we have always wondered at.  And not only do they know what comes after, they know more clearly what our lives mean.  They know more clearly how important our lives are, and how hollow our pursuits are, and how precious our lives are, and how sad our lives are.  They know how brave we are, how vain we are, and how afraid we are. 

St. Roch Cemetery

They know because they have been us.  They know because they are us.  Just as our younger selves, caught in the frame of a photograph, are us from the past, when we did not yet know the present us and all that we have done and learned and found and lost, so too can we view the residents of these cities of the dead.  They are what we will become.  We too, will know what comes after, and will know what our lives have meant and if we lived them well, or if we wasted them.

I don't say all of that to make us dread and fear what is to come.  That's not what I feel when I walk the streets of these cities of the dead.  I do not pity myself because I will end up like so many who have died before.  I simply see how important it is to take advantage of what we have been given.  To make sure that if and when I die, I have not left a life of regret and unrealized dreams.  I don't want to discover too late that I've neglected those I loved.  Because it is not how we die or when we die that is important.  It is how we lived, and who we lived for that is.




Greenwood Cemetery

I never miss a chance to wander the beautiful avenues and little streets in these cities.  It is always a time of reflection.  If you are ever in New Orleans, make sure you take the time to see at least one of them.  It will be well worth your time.  (Of which, you might just be reminded, is always shorter than you think.)