Newport · US

Island Cemetery

On the quiet upper streets of historic Newport, Island Cemetery is far more than a burial ground—it is the city's open-air museum of the famous dead. Laid out on the high land ringing the older Common Burying Ground, this 19th-century garden cemetery holds the graves of naval heroes who opened Japan to the West, Gilded Age financiers who shaped New York, and the architects who built Newport's great houses. Together with its colonial neighbor, the Common Burying Ground, Island Cemetery forms a single listing on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, with thousands of graves spanning three centuries. Yet it remains a living, working cemetery: shaded paths, sculpted monuments and a Gothic memorial chapel invite slow, reflective walks among the names that made Newport.