Bilbao Mallona - Cementerio
Here we stand infron of the entrance to the former Mallona Cemetery .
The Mallona cemetery was the old cemetery of the city of Bilbao until 1902, the year in which the current Bilbao cemetery was inaugurated: The Vista Alegre Cemetery , in Derio. Start at the Casco Viejo subway station to reach this former cemetary.
Mallona's cemetery dated from 1828-1829. It was a neoclassical funerary architecture cemetery and was the work of the architect Juan Bautista Belaunzarán , who designed it as a 91 x 78 meter floor plan surrounded by Doric columns. One of the most striking elements it had was its octagonal chapel, although at the time of the opening of the cemetery it was not yet built. At first, this cemetery was ecclesiastical, but in 1863 the church ceded all rights to the land to the town hall.
After the three Carlist wars (especially the first one) and a cholera epidemic that occurred in 1845, the Mallona cemetery began to become small. In 1867 it was enlarged but it didn't take long for it to run out of space again.
In October 1887, both the deficient facilities of the cemetery and this lack of space were reported, so it was decided to build a new one according to the 1886 regulations on the matter (which dictated that necropolises should be built more than 2 kilometers away from towns).
Look here to find detailed information about the Mallona cemetary (Spanisch language):
El viejo cementerio de Mallona