Options
Research article

Journeys through deathscapes in the contemporary city: exploring urban interiority in New York City and Istanbul

Authors
  • V Şafak Uysal orcid logo (TED University, Türkiye)
  • Alison B Snyder orcid logo (Pratt Institute, USA)

Abstract

Historically, death was an intrinsic part of daily life, but the growth and modernisation of cities prompted the relocation of most cemeteries to urban outskirts owing to population expansion, rising mortality rates and fear of disease. Today, only a few cemeteries remain inside, yet they exist as often ignored ‘negative spaces’, invisible to most people’s eyes. Starting with the argument that these places provide us (individuals or collective) with an unexpected possibility – of preparing for a transition from the mundane to the sacred – we raise timely questions about their sustained presence in the contemporary city. We examine eight burial sites (of various scales, typologies and histories) found in Istanbul and New York City. These sites range from well-preserved to semi-obliterated; some are active and others closed, often physically bounded with understated gates or walls, sometimes disguised as neighbourhood parks or largely overlooked, wild remnants. We map the anatomy of each cemetery visit, gathered cumulatively via several journeys from the street, and then into, around and through, to expose the most fundamental spatial elements, characteristics, qualities and conditions of these ‘rites of passage’. Our framework is composed of four observational themes that we call markers (linguistic, temporal, experiential and contextual) to pinpoint the complexities we encountered during our study. We align our approach and findings with the growing field of urban interiority, not currently part of ‘deathscape’ studies. Thus, we expand both of these domains with our methodology that combines sensibilities drawn from gathering, walking, sensing, visualising and heuristics. Purposefully dialogic, we alternate between the perspectives of two authors/professors and two global cities, prioritising an interplay between text and image. Ultimately, presented in the form of an archetypal journey structured around nine zones of experience, our insights frame the urban cemetery not only as a liminal site constituting an urban interior but also as a site fostering the establishment of a complex relationship between a visitor’s physical being and layers of interiority.

Keywords: urban interiority, urban interiorism, cemetery studies, experiential visualisation, experiential mapping, phenomenology, urban walking

How to Cite: Uysal, V. Ş. and Snyder, A. B. ‘Journeys through deathscapes in the contemporary city: exploring urban interiority in New York City and Istanbul’. Architecture_MPS 32, 1 (2025): 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.amps.2025v32i1.001.

Rights: 2025, Alison B. Snyder and V. Şafak Uysal.

Downloads:
Download PDF
View PDF
Download XML

841 Views

66 Downloads

Published on
29 Sep 2025
Peer Reviewed
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Introduction

In the lines of A’mâk-ı Hayal (Depths of Imagination), Şehbenderzade Filibeli Ahmet Çelebi’s opening encapsulates all at once several common attributes of urban cemeteries, and their evolving nature and meaning:

This cemetery was enclosed by sturdy, artistically crafted walls. [It] was more than a mere burial ground or a repository of memories … Through the windows, one could glimpse the gravestones, adorned with inscriptions crafted by the hands of old calligraphers … Though abandoned for years, the cemetery possessed a mysterious beauty. Each spring, waist-high grasses and hemlocks, exuding the scent of death, would envelop the grounds. This cemetery, now encircled by the city’s expansion, had evidently stood on its outskirts once. Over time, as the city grew, it found itself enveloped by urban life, resting quietly in the heart of the bustling metropolis.1

Throughout the novel, the protagonist Raci is taken through nine ostensibly substance-induced trance states by Aynalı Dede (‘Father’ Mirror) – whose home is an urban cemetery.2 The story echoes a well-established historical narrative, according to which cemeteries were gradually pushed to the outskirts of cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries owing to urban growth, rising mortality rates and concerns over public health.3 As a result, the possibility of experiencing life’s natural cycles, including death, has been erased from the immediate context of everyday life. This means that our modern engagement with spaces of death may only manifest itself through incidental encounters with their remnants4 within the city.

Whether intact, disguised or in parts, the enduring relevance of these seemingly ignored ‘negative spaces’5 continue to be debated by diverse local stakeholders. We contribute to this large scholarship on the relationship between ‘necrogeographies’6 and the city by focusing on a selection of burial sites of various scales, typologies and histories in two seemingly unrelated cities – Istanbul and New York City. Our selection ranges from known to lesser-known sites, open to locked, active to remnant, semi-obliterated to preserved, Muslim to Christian to Jewish and manicured to neglected. We contend that cemeteries, as part of a city’s deathscape, represent neither ‘terrain vagues’7 nor mere ‘non-places’.8 We argue that these places9 provide an unanticipated opportunity for internalisation, contemplation and transformation within the city. And we opt to map the fundamental experiential aspects of this urban ‘rite of passage’,10 to present cumulative insights drawn from several journeys, suggesting nine zones that constitute overarching archetypes.

We also purposefully adopt a dialogic format, alternating constantly between the perspectives of two authors11 and two global cities. The same conversational tone extends to the visual domain via a series of layered visuals, using digital-photo collage and analogue print/drawing. Created separately, these techniques produce a combination of emotional and physical realities. In the end, the urban cemetery – a seemingly vacant non-place12 – emerges not only as a ‘liminal’ site13 but also as a place fostering a complex relationship between a visitor’s inner world and outer physicality – thus constituting an ‘urban interior’.14

Our initial concerns

Our exploration of two global megacities began as happenstance. Having first met at a faculty event in Istanbul in January 2023, we soon discovered a number of overlapping interests, leading to subsequent discussions and conversational walks through various urban settings. Our conversations were shaped by a heightened awareness of the subject’s immediacy.15 During our second meeting, our feet took us to the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery in central Istanbul. This barely manicured space provided for a shared contemplation as the vibrancy of the city seemed to momentarily recede. In time, our conversation became more pointed, intimate and introspective. We realised our relative comfort around death – in contrast to associations of fear, sadness, dis-ease or recovery.16 We felt that entering a cemetery was neither an odd nor a macabre experience.

Despite possible explanations, if we ask why we visit cemeteries if not for grieving or mourning, our intuitive response might simply be: that it feels right. Maybe these visits17 pressure us to rethink our daily routines. Sometimes we are drawn to the vast silence, headstones and ordering systems, and even the hodgepodge layouts. They all evoke moments of honouring life and foster ineffable intimacies that, though lived in public, are oddly private.18 At other times, simply the act of gazing through the railings becomes a ponderous act in itself. The visits sometimes feel like a hunt for experiences imbued with meaning. Ultimately, however, the most honest answer would still be that we really do not know exactly why. Nevertheless, we are drawn and this pull stems from a different appeal than other forms of urban greenery. Deathscapes propel us beyond conventional understandings of dualities such as space–place, living–dead, city–nature, inside–outside and public–private.19 Mobilised by the richness of the graveyard, our imagination becomes central and enables deeply personal interactions.

With all these considerations, we started looking into New York City and Istanbul as topographies of death to lay out a preliminary spectrum. Rather than following predetermined selection criteria, our approach evolved organically. Some site choices came about by chance as we drifted by, documenting them on the spot, while others necessitated travel across our cities – an approach akin to transductive reasoning.20 In general, we observed varying degrees of visibility and acknowledgement of the deceased, as well as differences in access. Their conditions of being either maintained or having decayed further qualified our observations and added to our questions about use or neglect over time. As we transitioned into our analytical stages, we started categorising our sites, associating them with different religions, sects and heritages while seeking diversity in size and layout. We identified a spectrum from singular graves to group burial types – such as family mausolea, communal tombs and even unmarked crypts – as well as a range of scales from extra-extra small to extra large. We consciously excluded the largest cemeteries (such as Zincirlikuyu and Karacaahmet in Istanbul or Green-Wood, Mount Hebron and Calvary in New York City), eliminated those heavily frequented as tourist destinations and decided not to focus on cemeteries adjacent to and associated with specific religious structures.

Our theoretical framework

Our entire project maturation period was characterised by a constant process of inquiry. We have deliberately avoided positioning ourselves as experts – since our perspective on the subject matter was not that of an academician with extensive specialisation in cemetery studies. When our vocabularies became insufficient or if a topic proved too large and complex, we turned again and again to our sites, experiences and scholarly sources – a process that remains ongoing. This iterative method often required us to pause to address and navigate various challenges in, and intricacies of, the subject.

Therefore, before presenting our findings, it is essential to articulate at least some of the sensibilities we were compelled to engage in dealing with our topic. For this article, we group these sensibilities around four observational themes that we call markers. Each marker serves to identify a particular complexity associated with our work, helping us to refrain from oversimplifying its nuances. Although we present these in a sequential manner, it is crucial to emphasise that no hierarchy is implied as each one is equally significant in elucidating our direction and the tone of our study.

Marker 1: linguistic complexity

The first marker regards the linguistic and semantic complexity in describing the placing of the dead, which can be traced via etymologies of the English term cemetery and the Turkish word mezarlık. According to Sir Raymond Firth:

Some terms, such as grave, burying ground, burial place and sepulchre, of various linguistic origins, refer simply to the disposal of the corpse in the earth and covering it over. Others indicate places specially prepared, such as mortuary, for the temporary reception of a corpse, and ossuary, a storage place for the bones, implying their retention for a period. The terms graveyard, cemetery and necropolis etymologically indicate places specifically set apart for collective reception of the dead. The linguistic emphases in these three words are different. Graveyard refers to the enclosure containing graves; necropolis refers to the dead as buried in or near a city, or perhaps as constituting a city in themselves. Cemetery does not refer to the dead at all. In classical Greek the equivalent word meant simply a dormitory, and the English term then seems to imply a resting place or a sleeping place.21

To this list, other terms can easily be added, such as entombment, tomb, coffin, shroud, sarcophagus and inurnment. Further architectural and spatial forms associated with burial include catacombs, shrines, mausoleums, burial vaults and crypts. Inhumation denotes burial in the ground, while entombment refers to burial within an above-ground crypt; interment signifies the resting space itself and has come to encompass spaces designated for all types of remains, including cremated ashes. As can be seen, all these terms emphasise a different aspect of burial. Some focus on the function (such as protection, hiding, sheltering and disposal), while others accentuate the act of burial (such as digging or covering). Others point to the status of the dead (that is, resting or sleeping) or to the characteristics and properties of the space or form of burial. A corresponding variability subsists in Turkish as well, in words such as mezar, mezarlık, kabir, kabristan, makber, gömüt, sin, defin, medfen, tabut, türbe, hazire, lahit, morg and many others. While a detailed examination of these semantic clusters is beyond our scope, we find it worth noting that the word mezar in Turkish marks the grave as a site to be visited.

Marker 2: temporal complexity

The second marker involves the historical variability and connection of the placing of cemeteries to patterns of urban growth and morphology. According to Walter Benjamin:

It has been observable for a number of centuries how in the general consciousness the thought of death has declined in omnipresence and vividness … And in the course of the nineteenth century bourgeois society has [made] it possible for people to avoid the sight of the dying. Dying was once a public process in the life of the individual … think of the medieval pictures in which the deathbed has turned into a throne toward which the people press through the wide-open doors of the death house. In the course of modern times dying has been pushed further and further out of the perceptual world of the living.22

Here, Benjamin succinctly encapsulates the modern city’s loss of connection with architectures of death. Accordingly, if previously largely propelled by hygienic concerns, actual ‘designed’ cemeteries began to appear and become part of the modernisation processes of European and American cities only in the eighteenth century.23 Michel Foucault takes this historical trajectory further by identifying cemeteries as a paradigmatic example of ‘heterotopias’, outlined in the form of six principles.24 Paralleling Benjamin, his second principle summarises how cemeteries occupied a central position within Western cities, often situated next to churches as symbols of immortality, but were then relocated to the periphery, where each family possessed its private burial spaces.25 This historical shift is complicated by Foucault’s fourth principle, which associates cemeteries with ‘heterochrony’ – as spaces that disrupt our traditional understanding of time.26 Accordingly: (1) cemeteries are outside of time – although they vary in form across cultures, serving as sites of both crisis and deviation; (2) they evolve over time, reflecting different societal uses and attitudes at different times; (3) they juxtapose many different and incompatible times within a single site; and (4) they embody a dual temporality, simultaneously signifying rupture alongside enduring memory. While a detailed examination of these premises is beyond our scope, Foucault’s theorisation offers a distinctly temporal framework for understanding cemeteries as heterochronic spaces.27

Marker 3: experiential complexity

Our third marker concerns the experiential complexity observed inside the cemetery. From the start, our interest has lain not in the materiality of the corpse or in the phenomenology of the bereaved but in the daily experiences and discernments (sensitivities, realisations and so on) one may have or feel in the presence of the dead. This approach initially appears at odds with the literature, which focuses largely on attitudes towards the corpse, the overall design of cemeteries and the process of grief – all from a utilitarian perspective, centralising the dead body as a material, medical and spatial problem.

Expanding the primary meaning of cemeteries by inscribing them as spaces for recreation and community engagement,28 a second lineage foregrounds the comfort of the bereaved in the rural settings that gave rise to the ‘garden cemetery’ of the nineteenth century. As spaces meant to inspire moral sentiment and serve as sites of leisure and contemplation, botanist John Claudius Loudon’s vision of Victorian cemeteries combined recreation with opportunities for artistic and cultural enrichment.29 Over time, as parks became more prevalent, such uses of cemeteries declined,30 only to be rekindled again in the twenty-first century – exploring the ecological and restorative potential of cemeteries and highlighting their value as greenspaces.

As this brief overview reveals, cemeteries accommodate a plethora of activities and affective states. Reflecting on these complexifications, cemetery studies has benefited from the ‘spatial turn’31 in social sciences by focusing on the locations where death is encountered (such as crash sites and disaster areas) as well as the spatialities conditioning and emerging from this encounter.32 Emphasising the cultural aspects associated with death, this attention on deathscapes and necroscapes not only expands our research horizon but also reminds us of the intrinsic spatiality of burial itself. Yet, despite the substantial increase in the number of historical, geographical, anthropological, sociological, political and economic studies centralising the definition, establishment, formation, transformation, meaning, appearance, use, management and evaluation of the cemetery space,33 there remains a notable gap in research addressing how such spaces are phenomenologically experienced outside the contexts of bereavement and recreation. We seek to address this gap by examining how the living can interact with and repurpose these deathscapes in ways that transcend the function of burial and mourning as well as leisure.

Marker 4: contextual complexity

The fourth marker pertains to the historical weight held within the vastness of Istanbul and New York City as necrogeographies. From the outset, we felt a persistent pressure in not overlooking contextual differences; however, the sheer scope of the task imposed on us a prioritisation of commonalities over divergences. Unexpectedly, we uncovered a remarkable array of overlapping conditions and circumstances while trying to ensure equal representation of both urban cultures.34

We discovered that both cities embody an urban vision that integrates life and death as part of a continuum, with cemeteries functioning as a ‘living organ’ within the metaphorical organism of the city. Reporting on New York City, archaeologist and cemetery researcher Elizabeth Meade observes that ‘New York’s residents’ relationships with, and proximity to, death and burial changed dramatically over time. In the days of the city’s colonial occupation, death was a constant presence.’35 Speaking in a resonant tone, architectural historian Fatima İkbal Polat emphasises the active connection of cemeteries in Istanbul ‘to the urban experience of inhabitants [maintained] through the rituals and acts of visiting that render their symbolic functions perpetual and alive’.36 Both perspectives underscore the similarities in the historical transformation of deathscapes within each city while portraying cemeteries as socially and culturally vibrant spaces, continuously woven into the rhythms of urban life.

Following this preliminary sentiment is the realisation that the growth trajectories and urban morphologies of Istanbul and New York City reveal striking parallels in the ways in which the past and present placement and displacement of cemeteries are associated with particular sensibilities and discourses.37 These are histories as much infused with religious affairs as urban, topographical and infrastructural developments, and more obvious medical or economic concerns.38 Though not covered in this article, there are notably intriguing correspondences between the uniquely American phenomenon of ‘potter’s fields’ – where masses of interred bodies have been covered over, often by city parks39 – and the Turkish concept of ‘cemeteries of the unknown’. Finally, in both cities, we find (and feature) small- to medium-sized cemeteries that were once peripheral to the city but now exist as remnants subsumed by the metropolitan expansion.

Our approach and methodology

Paradoxically, we know more and doubt what we know. Ingeniously, we know there is always more to know.40

While working through the complexities above, we recognise that our approach is best situated within the field of urban interiors – an evolving body of research (in urbanism, landscape, architecture and many facets of interior design) that has garnered attention over the past two decades through a proliferation of scholarly projects and anthologies that challenge traditional categorisations of the built environment. Incorporating a multidisciplinary array of methodologies, this body of work utilises different tenses and orders of the words ‘urban’ and ‘interior’, arguing that scales and typologies of interiors can be contested. It is by aligning with this line of investigation that we categorise the cemetery as an urban interior, at the same time as we invite Snyder’s term of urban interiorism into cemetery studies.41 Thus, we expand both domains by combining sensibilities drawn from gathering, urban walking, sensing, visualising and heuristics.

Gathering

It is important for us to avoid striving for fixed truths, aligning instead with sociologist Laurel Richardson’s concept of crystallisation. This approach ‘deconstructs the traditional idea of validity’ by embracing multiplicity, offering a ‘deepened, complex, thoroughly partial understanding’ of the subject matter.42 For this reason, whenever possible, we emphasise gathering and collecting, not merely as principles but as research methods in themselves. Thus, we are aware of the differences in articulation within the community of scholarly inquiries centralising urban interiority, as well as within cemetery studies, but we consciously choose to emphasise shared concerns – again, even if provisionally. This obviously does not imply a disregard for nuance or a lack of commitment to precision but stems from our conviction that, in the vicinity of such singularities as the city and death, our efforts are better spent on first fostering a holistic understanding that transcends fragmentation.

Walking

We often find ourselves turning to historical travellers, as well as modern geographers and literary figures, who engage with the city through walking. In this vein, we follow in the steps of wanderers of all types who act not only as urban critics or chroniclers of the day but also as observers attuned to the sensory qualities of their environs. While a comprehensive list would be too exhaustive, we would also be remiss in not acknowledging some general figures, such as Michel de Certeau, Walter Benjamin, Keith Tester or the situationists, as well as those with specific relevance to New York City (including Charles Hemstreet, Joseph Mitchell, Ben Jacks, Matthew Gandy, Richard Sennett, Lucy Sante and Jeremiah Moss) and to Istanbul (such as Evliya Çelebi, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Edmondo de Amicis, Anna Bowman Dodd, John Freely, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Yusuf Atılgan, Suat Derviş and Orhan Pamuk, among others).

Sensing

In this particular work, we try to make as little contact as possible with bereaved individuals.43 While we note our interactions with animals and plants, it is mostly our sensory and affective experiences that take precedence – mainly because our sites appear to possess an almost super-sensory quality, evoking moods of calm, relaxation and ‘enchantment’.44 Our attention is occasionally drawn towards how natural and cultural elements within the cemetery sustain a sense of place. Time also emerges as a recurring theme, with ecological cycles both aligning and contrasting with the interrupted temporality of the dead and the circadian rhythms of the living.

Visualising

Within the cemetery, it is not only the landscape that is symbolic and socially constructed; images and imaginations are also circulated and linger in our perceptions and conversations. Perhaps in reverence to geographer Mike Crang’s metaphor of the landscape as a palimpsest,45 we expressly make an effort to uncover these layered conditions as we find ourselves needing to make our own multiple forms of visual documentations during and following our visits to the selected sites. These visualisations serve not only to observe or analyse but also to make sense of our own sensory perceptions. In the end, our multilayered narrations (and depictions) allow us to both process our observations and establish a bridge between historical and contemporary sensibilities, all the while bringing to the surface various themes such as urban fragmentation, spatial erasure and personal loss.

Heuristics

Once walking, self-reflection and self-documentation became so central to our work processes, we needed a method that valued our own place within research. Well into our study, we realised that, surprisingly, we were already following in the steps of heuristic inquiry as defined by psychologist Clark Moustakas46 – namely, initial engagement, immersion, incubation, illumination, explication and creative synthesis. We found that the perspective of heuristics genuinely supports our framework by emphasising the researcher’s active presence throughout an inquiry. Rooted in phenomenology, this methodology incorporates the researcher as both participant and source to facilitate a deeper engagement with the phenomenon under study. It is characterised by seven principles: identification with the focus of inquiry; self-dialogue; tacit knowing; intuition; indwelling; focusing; and the construction of an internal frame of reference.47

Our visits – journeys

Overall, our primary objective was to map our visits to a collection of cemeteries in order to conceptualise the transformative spatio-emotional journeys facilitated by these urban places. Both cities feature a majority of religiously affiliated cemeteries and our goal was to select a variety of them without bias towards any particular tradition. To ensure a manageable scope, meaningful contrast and a parity of size and type between the two cities, we confined ourselves to eight distinct deathscapes: four in New York City and four in Istanbul.

Our selection includes both complete cemeteries that are preserved in their original dimensions and remnants of larger burial grounds (Figure 1). All the chosen sites are no longer active – except burials for limited direct lines of descent at Alibeyköy and the Marble cemeteries in New York City (our study focuses on the New York City Marble Cemetery, referred to as NYC Marble, from here onwards).

Figure 1
Figure 1

The final selection of cemeteries and their locations in both cities 

We gradually developed a systematic set of terms to describe our spatial experiences associated with approaching, entering, spending time in and departing from these cemeteries. Through this process, we identified nine archetypal48 zones, presented in Table 1, with corresponding experiential highlights – each of which can arguably be found in all cemetery visits, even if they materialised differently and with different time spans.

Table 1

Our nine archetypal zones 

Zone Experiential highlight
1 Indifference passing by, unaware of the existence of the cemeteries
2 Noticing becoming aware of their existence, approaching the gate
3 Stepping in taking a step inside
4 Transition moving through an intermediary space
5 Expansion becoming aware of a central path, attention expanding laterally
6 Deepening/reversal intentionally moving further and deeper inside
7 Immersion completely detaching from the street space
8 Revelation going through a shift in awareness
9 Reinhabiting heading towards the exit

The subsequent sections are supplemented by a series of multilayered visuals – digital photographic collage work and analogue overlaying of printed and hand-drawn diagrams – illustrating how our creative syntheses informed the research and composition of this article. Our constructed images derive from both our own experiences and, at times, the records of others, capturing visits across various seasons.49 Reflecting the layered nature of bodies, movements, reflections and meanings around and within the cemetery, the overlapping of visual elements also represents the iterative nature of our discussions and writing. All these decisions are meant to inform and transport the reader, functioning as interrelated spatial gestures and urban annotations. We hope that the use of diverse visual methods in this manner encourages a freer engagement with these places, while also transcending the illustrative relationship between word and image.50

Restricted access, yet visible cemeteries

Our first cluster comprises entirely inaccessible sites, visibly locked and closed to visitation. We look at three Jewish Sephardic cemeteries in lower Manhattan neighbourhoods (the remnants of the First, Second and Third Shearith Israel cemeteries) as well as three Muslim cemeteries in two neighbourhoods in Istanbul (the remnants of the two-part Ayrılık Çeşmesi Arab Cemetery in Kadıköy and the Mustafa Efendi tomb and graveyard in Cihangir).

It is notable that, in New York City, Jewish cemeteries are the only religious group to have their burials physically separate from their synagogues or congregational locations. It is also notable that the Sephardic Congregation of Shearith Israel, established in 1683, founded the city’s earliest gravesite, marking a significant milestone in New York’s burial history. The First Shearith cemetery was originally located outside the city limits – an important condition that continued to be met into the nineteenth century – and was nearly full by 1800. Manhattan’s urban expansion and infrastructural development resulted in a reduction in size and the reinterment of several remains at the Second Shearith cemetery between 1805 and 1830.51 Today, the site sits behind a number of row apartment houses and is bordered by a school. The Second Shearith cemetery served not only as a burial site for prominent members of the congregation but also accommodated victims of epidemics and transient Jews, especially after the 1823 New York City ban on burials south of Canal Street. In 1830, with the extension of the city grid, the cemetery was further reduced, forcing it into the somewhat picturesque triangular plot it occupies today, surrounded by a second wave of urban development.52 Occupying a rectangular infill space, the Third Shearith cemetery was established in response to the city’s continued growth and accepted burials from 1829 to 1851, when a ban on cemeteries south of 86th Street was instated. This cemetery, the largest of the three, also accommodated reinterments from the First Shearith cemetery during the early 1850s, when the latter was further reduced in size for area redevelopment. The remnants of these three locked cemeteries are maintained to this day by the Sephardic congregation and preservationists.53

Ayrılık Çeşmesi Arab Cemetery, located in Kadıköy, once spanned a significant area, extending parallel to the railway towards Ayrılık Çeşmesi and its prayer sofa, after which it is named. Notably serving as the final extension of the vast Karacaahmet cemetery, the oldest and largest in Türkiye, the cemetery housed prominent individuals, with burials dating from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Rapid urbanisation and the rise of unauthorised housing, particularly from the 1960s onwards, led to the destruction of much of the cemetery, including its historic gravestones and trees. Efforts by the Turkish Touring and Automobile Association in the 1970s partially preserved the section near the railway by removing illegal housing, restoring gravestones and installing iron railings. Yet today, significant portions of the cemetery are entirely erased, while the remaining sections are divided into two fragments that are unprotected and continue to degrade within a densely populated residential area.54 Our third inaccessible site in Istanbul is the Mustafa Efendi tomb and graveyard, an extremely small, practically anonymous plot in Cihangir. Tightly nestled between two adjacent buildings and elevated from the roadside, the historic remnants comprise two sarcophagi alongside approximately 20 graves adorned with traditional headgear such as turbans, caps, hats and fezzes. Currently, the site is in a state of disrepair and is closed to the public, fenced off from the main road by metal wire mesh. It is worth noting that all three of these sites exhibit historical ties to Istanbul’s largest and most renowned burial grounds – although the remnants themselves are completely unmarked and unattended.

Engaging with these cemeteries first involves a relationship of indifference. As we move through the urban landscape, we either completely ignore their existence or acknowledge it only in passing. As we traverse the city with a sense of detachment, the cemeteries, enclosed by their railings and walls, appear as impermeable enclaves – their presence simultaneously pervasive and overlooked.

In the second zone, noticing, our perception begins to shift. The seemingly impenetrable boundaries of the cemeteries reveal some form of an interruption (such as a gate, an arch, stairs or an opening) that hints at the possibility of entry. This recognition generates a slight tension, as the idea of entering the cemetery becomes less abstract and more feasible. Yet, because we remain physically and perceptually rooted in the street space, this awareness is more akin to a momentary splitting of our attention. The gates, often locked, serve as both an invitation and a denial, a divide that invites curiosity while preserving separation. As we go about our own ways, there is a brief yet lingering awareness of what lies beyond these barriers (Figure 2 and Figure 3). This interplay between boundary and access reveals the paradoxical nature of cemeteries as spaces that are simultaneously within reach and remote, as experienced from the outside.

Figure 2
Figure 2

First, Second and Third Shearith cemeteries (from top to bottom); analogue layers presenting exterior views and interior atmospheres 

Figure 3
Figure 3

The two parts of the Ayrılık Çeşmesi Arab Cemetery; digital-photocollage presenting experiences from the exterior and street space (top, bottom); analogue layers expressing multiple views and interior atmospheres (middle) 

Publicly accessible cemeteries

When it comes to enterable examples, NYC Marble, on the one hand, occupies a simple wide, rectangular, flat plot, surrounded on three sides by internal walls and buildings of varying scales and serving residential and educational functions. Its primary frontage consists of a low masonry wall topped with iron railings. Alibeyköy Cemetery, on the other, occupies a hilly corner plot, flanked by a side street on one side and a long, steep stairway on the other. Its main frontage also features a wall with railings, while its edges are defined by the neighbourhood square, the old market and a small modern shopping mall.

Although not our specific purview, the 1823 and 1851 bans associated with the three Shearith cemeteries hold significant historical relevance as the latter effectively ignited the rural cemetery movement, prompting the relocation of burials to areas far outside the metropolitan core of New York City. The histories of the NY Marble Cemetery (established in 1830) and the NYC Marble Cemetery (established a year later, half a block away) reflected this shift as they were created as alternatives to standard burials, supposedly to offer greater safety against disease as well as optimising burial efficiency and maximising space. Founded by private businessmen, these early non-denominational burial grounds featured family vaults, maintained and manicured to this day by the wealthy social elite or the current vault owner’s descendants. Though gated, the NYC Marble Cemetery is open to the public on designated days. Aside from the 265 vaults and over 4,000 estimated burials that it contains, the cemetery features not only markers on the ground and the surrounding walls but also a sprinkling of upright monuments, walkways, small trees and other foliage.55

Alibeyköy Cemetery is a cemetery located outside the city centre within a mixed-use residential area. Named after Ali Bey, the area developed as a farmstead during the fifteenth century. It was described by Evliya Çelebi in the seventeenth century as a verdant recreational site with 40 houses, a mosque and a grove of 70 to 80 plane trees.56 According to Reşad Ekrem Koçu,57 by the year 1946 the village had 180 households, a population of 901 and several amenities. As the village’s fertile lands produced corn, vegetables and significant amounts of milk for Istanbul, the locals engaged in agriculture and trade while some worked at the nearby Silahtarağa Power Plant. Its residents also included descendants of Rumelian migrants, contributing to its cultural and economic development through jewellery making and confectionery. In this context, Alibeyköy Cemetery is named in older maps dating back to the 1920s but is said to have been officially established in 1957. However, official record-keeping by the General Directorate of Cemeteries only began in June 1981. Owing to the cemetery reaching full capacity, burials are now limited to overlaid interments within existing family plots. Notably, it is likely the most tranquil of the sites examined and arguably the least conspicuous from an external perspective, hiding in plain sight because of the trees, especially while they were in bloom but also when they were not.

As far as our first two zones are concerned, both cemeteries extend longitudinally parallel to the street in front of them. As pedestrians, we usually walk past them, railings falling to the periphery of our visual field and thus appearing as an impenetrable surface. We thus remain unaware of or uninterested in these cemeteries – unless we deliberately turn our heads (Figure 4 and Figure 5).

Figure 4
Figure 4

NYC Marble; analogue layers and digital collage expressing multiple views and interior atmospheres 

Figure 5
Figure 5

Alibeyköy Cemetery; digital collage and analogue layers presenting multiple interior–exterior experiences, including street space 

In the third zone, stepping in, we arrive at the gate and take our first steps inside (Figure 6). This ostensibly simple act creates a sharp shift in frequency and a substantial transformation in our experience. Inside, the environment feels softer, calmer, cooler, more spacious and welcoming – which is in stark contrast with the external urban environment, now seeming harsher, agitated, warmer, crowded and confrontational. In a sense, our first awareness of the inside (cemetery) becomes an awareness of the outside (city), which then informs our awareness about the inside. A spatial shift as such also invites a moment of pause, whereby the stillness of the cemetery encourages reflection.

Figure 6
Figure 6

Stepping in: NYC Marble and Alibeyköy cemeteries 

In the fourth zone, transitioning, we move into an intermediary space, with characteristics of a vestibule, which gradually prepares for the cemetery’s interior atmosphere. In NYC Marble, this vestibule takes the form of a dirt and pebble section of the walkway, just before reaching a four-way intersection. The materiality of the ground – its tactile texture and muted sounds – signals a shift in pace and tone, encouraging a more contemplative progression. In Alibeyköy, this transition is provided by a cement slope, flanked by raised beds and graves, inviting an acknowledgement of our movement into a more sacred space. We begin to negotiate a new set of feelings – admiration for the craftsmanship, hesitation rooted in the sombre context, awe at the weight of history and subtle fear. All these layered responses underscore the transition from the everyday to the extraordinary as experienced from the inside.

In the fifth zone, expansion, we become attuned to the internal dynamics of the cemetery as a central path comes into focus as a guiding structure (Figure 7). A childlike curiosity takes over as we move inward with greater intentionality. Our perspective is expanded laterally. As a physical expression of this expansion in NYC Marble, the side paths diverge from the central walkway, pulling us towards one end of the cemetery. We wander off the main route and plunge into the monuments and gravestones while being taken by the interplay between the central space and the periphery. In Alibeyköy, by contrast, the central path is far more contained. The tightly packed raised graves limit physical exploration, confining our movement primarily to the main walkway. This spatial constraint, however, redirects our attention outward, compelling us to scan the surroundings with our gaze. While the path subtly curves and extends towards the back of the cemetery, this tension between the possibility and impossibility of moving and seeing fosters a dynamic perception of the cemetery space, which unfolds gradually through movement.

Figure 7
Figure 7

Expansion: NYC Marble and Alibeyköy cemeteries 

In the sixth zone, deepening/reversal, we walk further into the cemetery, becoming increasingly aware of the distance we have traversed from the street space. This physical separation is mirrored by a perceptual shift as the vitality and density of elements in our immediate surroundings amplify (Figure 8). In Alibeyköy, this transformation is accentuated by each step upwards, creating a heightened awareness of the topography and spatial layering. Turning back, we glimpse partial views of the city through gaps in the tree branches as if the city itself is receding into the background. In NYC Marble, the deepening unfolds laterally as our height and distance from the street remain relatively constant. The interplay of side paths, trees, gravestones and railings creates a layered effect, subdividing the cemetery into smaller, intimate subspaces that act as filters further isolating us from the street. Though we remain in the open air in both cemeteries, the perception of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is reversed; the street space becomes solidified as an exterior realm, while the cemetery now becomes a self-contained, interior zone within the city.

Figure 8
Figure 8

Deepening/reversal: Alibeyköy and NYC Marble cemeteries 

In the seventh zone, immersion, we reach a state of complete detachment from the street space (Figure 9). In Alibeyköy, this takes the form of becoming immersed in the dense canopy of trees, leaving only the cemetery’s natural and memorial elements to command our attention. The sense of enclosure created by the layering of trees and foliage is enhanced by the interplay of light and shadow under the trees while we are encouraged to focus more on our immediate surroundings. In NYC Marble, this detachment takes on a more directional quality. Our gaze is drawn inward, directed towards the distant end of the cemetery, where the interplay of paths, monuments and natural elements gives way to a more spacious field. The enclosing effect of railings and internal walls ensures that the street is no longer perceptible, allowing the spatial boundaries of the cemetery to become more pronounced. In both cases, we are invited to give in to those liminal qualities usually associated with deathscapes, where the rhythms of city life are temporarily reprieved and the boundaries between life, memory and imagination are blurred.

Figure 9
Figure 9

Immersion: Alibeyköy and NYC Marble cemeteries 

The eighth zone, revelation, corresponds to a moment of enlightenment (Figure 10). In NYC Marble, this opening is deeply tied to a disruption of our temporal perception – as we lose sense of time. The realisation that we are walking or sitting atop vaults, hidden below, brings about an acute awareness, transforming the cemetery into a space of engagement with the history of families and bodies. This juxtaposition of transience and permanence causes our interior experience to be taken by a meditation on the fragility of human existence against the invulnerability of that which is changeless. In Alibeyköy, this revelation is prepared for by the drama of a steeper ascent and fulfilled by the mythical oozing of beams of light through the dense tree canopies. Shafts of sunlight hit the pathways and tombstones – at the same time they pull our attention upwards, where the crowns of trees break apart to reveal and frame the open sky. In both cases, the zone of revelation marks the cemetery not only as a site of mourning but also as a trans-scalar space for existential reflection and building resilience.

Figure 10
Figure 10

Revelation: NYC Marble and Alibeyköy cemeteries 

The ninth zone, reinhabiting, represents a gradual transition back into everyday life, where our attention again becomes split between the inside and the outside. Our movement becomes less purposeful, as though we are reluctant to abandon the cemetery space while we head towards the exit. In Alibeyköy, if we move towards the upper gate, the cemetery’s boundaries are gradually replaced by the neighbourhood’s upper parts, where the urban landscape reasserts itself. If we turn back and down, however, the transition is marked by a quality of sharedness – stray animals, often unnoticed on the way in, reappear as cohabitants of the space; or the locals, who use the stairs as a thoroughfare, remind us of the cemetery’s dual role as a sacred space and a practical reality. In NYC Marble, as we orient ourselves towards the central gate, the markers and monuments that dominated our attention earlier begin to recede into the periphery, eventually disappearing from our sight. The sensory cues of the city gradually reassert their dominance. The boundary of the cemetery fades as the opposite sidewalk comes into view. In both cases, the ninth zone is less about departure and more about re-entry, with a lingering moment of the transformative journey behind.

Concluding reflections

Our overall aim, thus far, has been to underline that death, as an integral aspect of life, is often neglected. Recognising the poetics58 and potentiality of cemeteries allows us to enhance the life processes already in front of us. To be able to do this, we first acknowledge cemeteries as overlooked niches within the urban fabric, not simply blank but full of possibility. Second, we see cemeteries as constituents of an alternative59 urban ecology – not in the sense of nature reserves or green spaces60 per se but more as ecosystems, the fundamental characteristics of which are dynamic interaction, coexistence and interconnectedness. These two premises foreground urban cemeteries as spaces that become not only places where the ever-present traces of life and death are rendered tangible but also ones in which our internal responses to this tangibility can be readily observed and felt.61

It is by aligning with the contributions of (urban) interior scholars such as Taylor, Preston, Brooker, Weinthal, Attiwill, Marinic, Stone and others62 that we take these premises further and mark the cemetery as an urban interior. This leads us, first, to outlining how the subtleties of interior-making make themselves explicit in urban cemeteries, despite them being open or exterior environments.63 We find that all our sites are physically delineated by walls, railings, fences or dense vegetation that separate them from their surroundings. The same sense of enclosure is also mentally at work as our sites are distinguished from their broader context through characteristics that sharply contrast with their external environment. Finally, all our sites possess a series of thresholds and liminal qualities, serving as spaces where the boundary between the sacred and the mundane, as well as the boundary between the private and the public, becomes blurred64 (as in Foucault’s fourth principle). Altogether the three layers of separation – physical, mental and beyond – expose the contradictory nature of urban cemeteries (secluded historical burial grounds vs. presently central urban sites) and become the basis for our designating them as a series of ‘open-air rooms’,65 the ground plane, edges, walls and even foliage of which are capped by the sky as their ceiling, furthering a notion of urban interiorism (Figure 10).66

We also find that the same liminal qualities position urban cemeteries as mediated spaces where individuals can momentarily dissociate from the immediacy of their surroundings, turn inwards and process some deep emotional and existential experiences, often previously unresolved. This potential for internalisation is further amplified by the super-sensory and palimpsest-like nature of the cemetery environment. In other words, all our sites function not only as atmospheric environments that heighten our perceptual experience and emotional resonance but also as repositories of individual and collective identity where gravestones, vault markers and memorials serve as material artefacts that embody heterochronicity (as suggested by Foucault’s third principle).

Our main objective has been to map this transformative process of turning inwards in the form of a spatio-emotional journey. The consistency of our cumulative analysis stems from our observation that the manifestation of any one of our nine zones in any particular site is not strictly limited to the specific content, duration, significance or experiential qualities outlined. Indeed, our mappings of an overall journey may represent only one narrative among many other possibilities,67 though we argue that they serve as a useful universal archetype (as suggested by Foucault’s first principle). Another aspect of the consistency of our comparative analysis stems from our shared sense that both New York City and Istanbul exhibit surprisingly similar conditions of interiority while simultaneously diverging owing to their largely Muslim and largely Christian, Jewish or other populations.68

And one final note. We are aware that analysing cemeteries as urban interiors highlights their role as sites of cultural production, whereby different societal values and attitudes towards death are represented and can be uncovered.69 As physical and discursive documents that can be studied through the lenses of urban history, cultural geography and political ecology, urban cemeteries gain an evidentiary status. Their continued presence within the metropolitan fabric serves to indulge in a critical history of their respective contexts (as in Foucault’s second principle). This layering remains underexplored but will be the central focus of our forthcoming work – this time with the intention of problematising the tension between tradition and cosmopolitanism.70

Notes

  1. Hilmi, A’mâk-ı Hayal, 5–6. ⮭
  2. Translating as meaning ‘journey to the depths of imagination or dreams’, A’mâk-ı Hayal is considered the first Sufi novel in Turkish literature. Each journey, or chapter, takes place in a different temporal and geographical setting, where Raci assumes the body and identity of a different person, varying in character, age, gender and religious belief. Despite covering a vast terrain in Raci’s imagination, the whole plot unfolds within a single physical location: Father Mirror’s homebase – which is no other than an urban cemetery. ⮭
  3. Aries, Western Attitudes toward Death; Kolnberger, ‘Cemeteries and urban form’. ⮭
  4. The concept of remains may have many indelible, sensitive and unintended repercussions – the thanatological, archaeological and theological implications being the most obvious. We use the word remnants simply in the literal sense of parts that are left after the greater whole has been removed or destroyed. ⮭
  5. For an extended discussion of the concept of ‘negative space’, see López-Marcos, ‘Spatium negatio’. ⮭
  6. Necrogeography points to the archaeological practice of studying a previously built metropolis through the spatiality of burial. The term ‘deathscape’, however, is most commonly used to refer to ‘both the places associated with death and for the dead’. See Maddrell and Sidaway, Deathscapes, 4. ⮭
  7. For an extended discussion of the concept of terrain vague, see Mariani and Barron, Terrain Vague and, especially, De Sola-Morales, ‘Terrain vague’; Franck, ‘Isn’t all public space terrain vague?’ ⮭
  8. The concept of non-place originates in the writings of Auge, Non-places. On the basis of Auge’s conceptualisation, Sørensen discusses cemeteries as non-places: Sørensen, ‘The presence of the dead’. ⮭
  9. A large body of literature exists concerning the space versus place paradigm, from Lefebvre’s Production of Space to Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience and many others. Offering a kind of eternal grounding, we would say that the cemetery must be called a place – as space holds potential like an open hand and becomes known as place when understood and filled with intention. ⮭
  10. Introduced by Van Gennep in the context of transformative rites of passage, the concept of liminality – a state of being in-between or in transition – sheds light on the socio-emotional differentiation of cemeteries from daily life by highlighting their disconcerting status as being situated between life and death: Van Gennep, Rites of Passage. The dual nature of cemeteries as liminal spaces also introduces a transformative disruption to the social order, whereby: (1) everyday/mundane norms can be less rigidly enforced and left behind; (2) individuals may envision alternate realities, experience joy and fully engage their senses. See Shields, Places on the Margin; Boyce-Tillman, ‘Transformative qualities’. ⮭
  11. Throughout the process, our voices, positions and collaborative roles continuously shifted and intertwined. We frequently lost track of which wording, idea or argument originated with whom, to the extent that we now contemplate and abandon the conventional distinction between first and second authors entirely. Drawing inspiration from Deleuze and Guattari’s introduction to A Thousand Plateaus, the most accurate expression of our experience might be that: ‘The two of us wrote [this] together … To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know [their] own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.’ Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 3. ⮭
  12. For a problematisation of the cemetery’s non-place status, see Deering, ‘Over their dead bodies’. ⮭
  13. Turner, ‘Betwixt and between’; Stavrides, Towards the City of Thresholds; Tabb, Thin Place Design. ⮭
  14. To gain insight into the development of the term ‘urban interior’, see Attiwill, Urban Interior. For a discussion around the ambiguity of interior/exterior and the reasoning behind the notion of ‘interior urbanism’, see also several authors’ points of view in Marinic, Interior Urbanism Theory Reader. ⮭
  15. This awareness was underscored by two significant events involving death on a global scale that bracketed our Feriköy visit: the devastating 6 February earthquakes in southeast Türkiye and northern Syria and the 13 February mass shootings at Michigan State University in the USA. Though geographically distant, both resonated deeply within the thematic framework of our study, reinforcing the interconnectedness of urban spaces and collective experiences of mortality. ⮭
  16. For an argument against common associations of cemeteries with fear, revulsion and abjection, see Young and Light, ‘Interrogating spaces of and for the dead’. ⮭
  17. Just like the notion of place referring to the experiential aspect of space, journey refers to the experienced aspect of visiting for us. ⮭
  18. For a discussion around public acts of privacy, see Samur and Uysal, ‘Digital ecologies, performative interiors, pandemic times’. ⮭
  19. Out of all the cemetery studies sources, the one work that we find closest to our approach is Annabel Deering’s doctoral study ‘Over their dead bodies’. We came across her work at a relatively late stage of our process yet feel indebted to acknowledge her overall summation of various debates in the field (space versus place, non-place versus heterotopia, burial versus recreation, mixing methods in qualitative research and so on), from which we benefited and borrowed tremendously. ⮭
  20. ‘Transduction elaborates and constructs a theoretical object, a possible object from information related to reality and a problematic posed by this reality. Transduction assumes an incessant feedback between the conceptual framework used and empirical observations.’ Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, 151. ⮭
  21. Firth, ‘Foreword’, xvii. ⮭
  22. Benjamin, Illuminations, 93–4. ⮭
  23. Polat, ‘State of cemeteries in Istanbul’, 137. ⮭
  24. Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’. ⮭
  25. Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, 25. ⮭
  26. Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, 26. ⮭
  27. For a more focused reading of the cemetery space based on Foucault’s concept of heterotopias, see Deering, ‘Over their dead bodies’, 30–3. ⮭
  28. See Greenoak, Wildlife in the Churchyard; Dunk and Rugg, Management of Old Cemetery Land; Worpole, Cemetery in the City; Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, Green Spaces, Better Places. ⮭
  29. See Ciregna, ‘Museum in the garden’; Johnson, ‘The modern cemetery’. ⮭
  30. Linden-Ward, ‘Strange but genteel pleasure grounds’. ⮭
  31. Warf and Arias, Spatial Turn; Withers, ‘Place and the “spatial turn”’; Nieuwenhuis and Crouch, Question of Space. ⮭
  32. See Sloane, Last Great Necessity; Winter, Sites of Memory; Rugg, ‘Few remarks on modern sepulture’; Rugg, ‘Defining the place of burial’; Reimers, ‘Death and identity’; Francis, ‘Cemeteries as cultural landscapes’; Bachelor, Sorrow and Solace; Francis et al., Secret Cemetery. ⮭
  33. Rugg, ‘Further remarks on modern sepulture’. ⮭
  34. A few dissertations already provide substantial critical historical introductions to this vast territory, respective to each city. Our main sources are Polat, ‘Death on the margin’, for Istanbul, and Meade, ‘“Prepare for death and follow me”’, for New York City. ⮭
  35. Meade, ‘“Prepare for death and follow me”’, 169. ⮭
  36. Polat, ‘State of cemeteries in Istanbul’, 1–2. ⮭
  37. Two important historical sources for tracing these displacements include the Pervititch insurance maps for Istanbul (https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/1824) and the Sanborn insurance maps for New York City (https://www.nypl.org/collections/nypl-recommendations/guides/fire-topo-property-maps#m). Hard copies of the former are available via Ersoy and Anadol, Istanbul in the Insurance Maps of Jacques Pervititch. ⮭
  38. Our additional sources on the Istanbul context have been: Eldem, Death in Istanbul; Kentel, ‘Assembling “cosmopolitan” Pera’; Kıygı, ‘Transformation of Beyoğlu Muslim Cemetery’; Alkan, ‘Geç 19.Yüzyıl ve Erken 20.Yüzyıl İstanbul’unda Tarihi Mezarlık Alanlarının Mekansal Dönüşümü’. For New York City, see Meade, ‘“Prepare for death and follow me”’; Rae, ‘Cemeteries as public urban green space’. For a more general coverage of historical and contemporary American burial traditions, see Rothstein and Staudt, Future of the Corpse. ⮭
  39. See Johnson, ‘Istanbul’s vanished city of the dead’; Young, ‘Manhattan’s forgotten graveyards’. ⮭
  40. Richardson, ‘New writing practices’, 14. ⮭
  41. It is curious that Part I of Marinic’s Interior Urbanism Theory Reader, which provides a comprehensive index of urban interior typologies, does not include an entry on the cemetery, or any other so-called exterior places that convey a sense of inside despite being located outside. For a multiscalar realisation of interiorism in the city, see Snyder, ‘Interiorism as a means to go forward’. ⮭
  42. Richardson, ‘New writing practices’, 13. ⮭
  43. Nor do we address (1) either city’s urban regulations for burial, (2) a deep understanding of the current death industry and how it expresses what we identify as a ‘rite of passage’ or (3) the many general and particular burial processes with their possible associated local bereavement customs. ⮭
  44. For an extended discussion of ‘enchanting encounters in the cemetery’, see Deering, ‘Over their dead bodies’, 138–64. ⮭
  45. Crang, Cultural Geography. ⮭
  46. Moustakas, Heuristic Research. ⮭
  47. Hiles, ‘Heuristic inquiry and transpersonal research’. ⮭
  48. Derived from the Greek words arche (first) and typos (model), archetypes are universal symbols and themes that appear in stories, myths and art across cultures. According to Carl Jung, these symbolic forms are part of the collective unconscious and represent fundamental human experiences and emotions. Jung, Four Archetypes. For an inquiry into literary manifestations of spatial archetypes in the specific context of Istanbul, see Hamzaoğlu Zafer and Uysal, ‘Archetypal narratives and architectural imagination’. ⮭
  49. All visuals, including handmade drawings, print work and digital collages, presented in this paper were originally created by the authors and are protected by copyright. The majority of the photographs used in the collages were taken by the authors, while a few images were sourced from various open-access domains and websites on the internet, including: https://www.nycmc.org, https://en.wikipedia.org, https://www.flickr.com, https://untappedcities.com, https://alexandracharitan.com, https://www.hmdb.org, https://www.findagrave.com and https://mourning-souls.livejournal.com. ⮭
  50. For related architectural digital and analogue inspirations, see Lima, Visual Complexity; Treib, Drawing/Thinking; Chatel, ‘Digital montage’. ⮭
  51. Elizabeth Meade’s dissertation borrows facts about early Jewish cemeteries from De Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone. See also Meade’s later website entries: https://nycemetery.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/first-shearith-israel-cemetery-chatham-square-cemetery, https://nycemetery.wordpress.com/?s=second+shearith and https://nycemetery.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/third-shearith-israel-cemetery. ⮭
  52. Marcum, ‘The Second Cemetery’. ⮭
  53. Ellis-Ferris, ‘Across from Lang’; Charitan, ‘First and Third Cemeteries’. See also the Congregation’s website: https://www.shearithisrael.org/about/our-history/cemeteries. ⮭
  54. Eyice, ‘Ayrılık Çeşmesi Mezarlığı’. ⮭
  55. See Elizabeth Meade’s dissertation, her later website entry: https://nycemetery.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/the-marble-cemeteries, and Schulz, ‘Peeking into the East Village’s marble cemeteries’. Also see the NYC Marble Cemetery’s website: https://www.nycmc.org/home.html. ⮭
  56. Koçu, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, 639. ⮭
  57. Koçu, İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, 640. ⮭
  58. For a poetic reading of the relationship between the contemporary city and its necro-double, see the chapters on ‘Cities and the dead’ in Calvino, Invisible Cities. ⮭
  59. For an argument against common denominations of cemeteries as ‘alternative’ spaces, see Young and Light, ‘Interrogating spaces of and for the dead’. ⮭
  60. For some recent examples, studying the contribution of cemeteries to urban green infrastructure, see Nordh et al., ‘A peaceful place in the city’; Nordh et al., ‘Similar spaces, different usage’; Quinton et al., ‘Living among the dead’; Skar et al., ‘Green urban cemeteries’. ⮭
  61. See Upton, Another City. ⮭
  62. See Taylor and Preston, Intimus; Brooker and Weinthal, Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design; Hollis and Stone, Inside Information; Attiwill, Urban Interior; Attiwill et al., ‘Urban + interior’; Marinic, Interior Urbanism Theory Reader. ⮭
  63. Leveratto offers a critical pre-history to the latest bridging of the ‘urban interior’ terminology by listing a number of figures who, in varying ways, contribute to a conceptualisation of urban open spaces as interiors and open-air rooms, as well as others who transformed interiority into a more existential and psycho-physical concept by centralising subjective experience. See Leveratto, ‘Urban interiors’. ⮭
  64. Tabb, Thin Place Design. ⮭
  65. Leveratto cites how Louis Kahn famously exhibited, in 1971, a sketch depicting a typical Italian square, accompanied by the inscription: ‘The street is also a room, a community room, the walls of which belong to the donors, its ceiling is the sky’ (‘Urban interiors’, 163). Accordingly, this statement encapsulates the conceptualisation of the built environment – whether private or public, domestic or urban – as a shared communal space, emphasising its dual nature as both a physical and a phenomenological construct. ⮭
  66. For an understanding of what ‘urban interiorism’ might include as alternative street space engagement, see Snyder, ‘The designed and the ad hoc’. ⮭
  67. For a collection of alternative accounts and readings, see the special issue: Capozzi and Pirina, ‘Forms of ritual’. ⮭
  68. For two comprehensive websites that offer general and specific cemetery listings while mapping and providing brief histories of most of the cemeteries that existed, or still exist, in Istanbul and New York City, see https://istanbultarihi.ist/548-historic-cemeteries-in-istanbul and https://nycemetery.wordpress.com. ⮭
  69. Palgi and Abramovitch, ‘Death: A cross-cultural perspective’. ⮭
  70. We presented our work at the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE) annual conference 2025 (23–26 May 2025 in Alexandria, Egypt) on the theme of cosmopolitanism and tradition; see https://iaste.org/iaste-2025-alexandria. ⮭

Authorship/contribution statement

The authors regard this article as the outcome of a fully collaborative process and a joint endeavor in the fullest sense – in that they both contributed equally to the conception of the work/project, its development, and the final composing and writing of the article. As the work cannot and should not be divided into ‘first’ and ‘second’ authorship, the ordering of names reflects only the conventions of this publication and the necessary linearity of typical publication protocols and language. The authors ask the readers to understand that the priority or hierarchy of contribution should equally be read as: Snyder, Alison B., Uysal, V. Şafak or Uysal, V. Şafak, Snyder, Alison B. (and that the copyright and citation, would also be seen both ways). See also note 11 in this article.

Declarations and conflicts of interest

Research ethics statement

Not applicable to this article.

Consent for publication statement

Not applicable to this article.

Conflicts of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest with this work. All efforts to sufficiently blind the authors during peer review of this article have been made. The authors declare no further conflicts with this article.

References

Alkan,Saygın. (2022).  ‘Geç 19.Yüzyıl ve Erken 20.Yüzyıl İstanbul’unda Tarihi Mezarlık Alanlarının Mekansal Dönüşümü’.  PhD diss.. Trakya University.

Aries,Philippe. (1974).  Western Attitudes toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press.

Attiwill,Suzie. (2011).  Urban Interior: Informal Explorations, Interventions and Occupations. Baunach:Spurbuch Verlag.

Attiwill,Suzie; Giunta,Elena Enrica; Fassi,Davide; Crespi,Luciano; Hermida,Belen. (2015).  ‘Urban + interior: Introduction’.  IDEA Journal, :2–11.

Auge,Marc. (2009).  Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. New York:Verso.

Bachelor,Philip. (2004).  Sorrow and Solace: The Social World of the Cemetery. Amityville, NY:Baywood.

Benjamin,Walter. (2007).  Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York:Schocken Books.

Boyce-Tillman,June. (2009).  ‘The transformative qualities of a liminal space created by musicking’.  Philosophy of Music Review 17 (2) :184–202, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/PME.2009.17.2.184

Brooker,Graeme, Weinthal,LoisLois(ed s .), . (2013).  The Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design. London:Bloomsbury.

Calvino,Italo. (1974).  Invisible Cities. New York/London:Harcourt Brace and Company.

Capozzi,Renato, Pirina,ClaudiaClaudia(ed s .), . (2021).  ‘Forms of ritual, forms of architecture’.  FAM – Magazine del Festival dell’Architettura 57–58 :11–18.

Charitan,Alexandra. ().  ‘First and Third Cemeteries of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue’.  personal blog entry. https://alexandracharitan.com/blog//2014/04/first-and-third-cemeteries-of-spanish.html. Accessed 30 April 2025

Chatel,Marie. (2020).  ‘Digital montage: On collage and the legacy of modernism’.  Medium, January102020 https://medium.com/danae/digital-montage-on-collage-and-the-legacy-of-modernism-ac9043247c61. Accessed 30 April 2025

Ciregna,Elise M. (2004).  ‘Museum in the garden: Mount Auburn Cemetery and American sculpture’.  Markers XXI :100–147.

Crang,Mike. (1998).  Cultural Geography. London:Routledge.

De Sola-Morales,Ignasi. (2014).  ‘Terrain vague’.  Terrain Vague: Interstices on the Edge. Mariani,Manuela, Barron,PatrickPatrick(ed s .),   London/New York:Routledge, pp.24–30.

De Sola Pool,David. (1952).  Portraits Etched in Stone: Early Jewish settlers, 1682–1831. New York:Columbia University Press.

Deering,Annabel. (2012).  ‘Over their dead bodies: A study of leisure and spatiality in cemeteries’.  PhD diss.. University of Brighton.

Deleuze,Gilles; Guattari,Félix. (1987).  A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions. (2002).  Green Spaces, Better Places: Final report of the Urban Green Spaces Taskforce. London:DTLR.

Dunk,Julie; Rugg,Julie. (1994).  The Management of Old Cemetery Land: Now and the Future. Crayford:Shaw and Sons.

Eldem,Edhem. (2005).  Death in Istanbul: Death and Its Rituals in Ottoman-Islamic Culture. Istanbul:Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre.

Ellis-Ferris,Daniel. (2012).  ‘Across from Lang, a forgotten graveyard’.  New School Free Press. March72012 https://www.newschoolfreepress.com/2012/03/07/across-from-lang-a-forgotten-graveyard.

Ersoy,Seden, Anadol,ÇağatayÇağatay(ed s .), . (2000).  Jacques Pervititch Sigorta Haritalarında İstanbul (Istanbul in the Insurance Maps of Jacques Pervititch). Istanbul:Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı and AXA Oyak.

Eyice,Semavi. (1988).  ‘Ayrılık Çeşmesi Mezarlığı’.  TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Dördüncü Cilt. İstanbul:Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, pp.285–286.

Firth,Sir Raymond. (2020).  ‘Foreword: The body in the sacred garden’.  The Secret Cemetery. Francis,Doris, Kellaher,Leonie;Leonieand Neophytou,GeorginaGeorgina(ed s .),   London/New York:Routledge, pp.xv–xxii.

Foucault,Michel. (1986).  ‘Of other spaces’.  Diacritics 16 (1) :22–27, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/464648

Francis,Doris. (2003).  ‘Cemeteries as cultural landscapes’.  Mortality 8 (2) :222–227, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1357627031000087442

Francis,Doris; Kellaher,Leonie; Neophytou,Georgina. (2005).  The Secret Cemetery. Oxford:Berg.

Franck,Karen A. (2014).  ‘Isn’t all public space terrain vague?’.  Terrain Vague: Interstices on the Edge. Mariani,Manuela, Barron,PatrickPatrick(ed s .),   London/New York:Routledge, pp.153–170.

Greenoak,Francesca. (1993).  Wildlife in the Churchyard: The Plants and Animals of God’s Acre. London:Little.

Hamzaoğlu Zafer,Büşra; Uysal,V Şafak. (2024).  ‘Archetypal narratives and architectural imagination: Reading Istanbul through Evliya Çelebi’s travelogue’.  Paper presented at ARCHTHEO ’24 XVIII. International History and Theory of Architecture Conference, Istanbul, Türkiye 15 November,

Hiles,Dave. (2001).  ‘Heuristic inquiry and transpersonal research’.  Paper presented at Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education Conference, London October, https://psy.dmu.ac.uk/drhiles/HIpaper.htm.

Hilmi,Filibeli Ahmet. (2014).  A’mâk-ı Hayal: Hayalin Derinlerinde Yolculuk. İstanbul:Kaknüs.

Hollis,Ed, Stone,SallySally(ed s .), . (2022).  Inside Information: The Defining Concepts of Interior Design. London:RIBA Publishing.

Johnson,Brian. (January–March 2005).  ‘Istanbul’s vanished city of the dead: The Grand Champs des Morts’.  The Fountain. https://fountainmagazine.com/all-issues/2005/issue-49-january-march-2005/istanbuls-vanished-city-of-the-dead-the-grand-champs-des-morts. Accessed 30 April 2025

Johnson,Peter. (2008).  ‘The modern cemetery: A design for life’.  Social & Cultural Geography 9 (7) :777–790.

Jung,Carl G. (2010).  Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Princeton:Princeton University Press.

Kentel,Koca Mehmet. (2018).  ‘Assembling “cosmopolitan” Pera: An infrastructural history of late Ottoman Istanbul’.  PhD diss.. University of Washington.

Kıygı,Gizem. (2019).  ‘The transformation of Beyoğlu Muslim Cemetery: Sanitizing, beautifying and reproducing the memory of the city in the nineteenth century’.  Master’s thesis. Boğaziçi University.

Koçu,Reşad Ekrem. (1959).  İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, İkinci Cild. Istanbul:Nurgök.

Kolnberger,Thomas. (2018).  ‘Cemeteries and urban form: A historico-geographical approach’.  Urban Morphology 22 (2) :119–139, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.51347/jum.v22i2.4074

Lefebvre,Henri. (1996).  Writings on Cities. Oxford:Blackwell.

Leveratto,Jacopo. (2019).  ‘Urban interiors: A retroactive investigation’.  Journal of Interior Design 44 (3) :161–171, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joid.12153

Lima,Manuel. (2011).  Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information. Princeton:Princeton Architectural Press.

Linden-Ward,Blanche. (1989).  ‘Strange but genteel pleasure grounds: Tourist and leisure uses of nineteenth-century rural cemeteries’.  Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture. Meyer,Richard(ed.),   Michigan:University Microfilms, pp.293–328.

López-Marcos,Marta. (2018).  ‘Spatium negatio: Transitions in urban space representation through the perspective of negativity’.  PhD diss.. University of Seville.

Maddrell,Avril, Sidaway,James DJames D(ed s .), . (2010).  Deathscapes: Spaces for Death, Dying, Mourning, and Remembrance. Farnham:Ashgate.

Marcum,Anna. (2022).  ‘The Second Cemetery of Congregation Shearith Israel’.  Off the Grid Village Preservation Blog. August222022 https://www.villagepreservation.org/2022/08/23/the-second-cemetery-of-congregation-shearith-israel/. Accessed 30 April 2025

Mariani,Manuela, Barron,PatrickPatrick(ed s .), . (2014).  Terrain Vague: Interstices on the Edge. London/New York:Routledge.

Marinic,Gregory(ed.), . (2024).  The Interior Urbanism Theory Reader. London/New York:Routledge.

Meade,Elizabeth D. (2020).  ‘“Prepare for death and follow me”: An archaeological survey of the historic period cemeteries of New York City’.  PhD diss.. CUNY Academic Works.

Moustakas,Clark. (1990).  Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology, and Applications. London:Sage.

Nieuwenhuis,Marijn; Crouch,David. (2017).  The Question of Space: Interrogating the Spatial Turn Between Disciplines. London:Rowman & Littlefield.

Nordh,Helena; Evensen,Katinka H; Skår,Margrete. (2017).  ‘A peaceful place in the city: A qualitative study of restorative components of the cemetery’.  Landscape and Urban Planning 167 :108–117, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.06.004

Nordh,Helena; Olafsson,Anton Stahl; Kajosaari,Anna; Præstholm,Søren; Liu,Yu; Rossi,Saana; Gentin,Sandra. (2022).  ‘Similar spaces, different usage: A comparative study on how residents in the capitals of Finland and Denmark use cemeteries as recreational landscapes’.  Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 73 :127598. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2022.127598

Palgi,Phyllis; Abramovitch,Henry. (1984).  ‘Death: A cross-cultural perspective’.  Annual Review of Anthropology 13 :385–417, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.13.100184.002125

Polat,Fatıma İkbal. (2023).  ‘Death on the margin: An urban history of land walls cemeteries in Istanbul’.  Master’s thesis. Middle East Technical University.

Polat,Fatıma İkbal. (2017–2018).  ‘State of cemeteries in Istanbul with regards to increasing urban density’.  Aura Istanbul Review 1/2 :134–149.

Quinton,Jessica M; Duinker,Peter N; Steenberg,James W N; Charles,John D. (2020).  ‘The living among the dead: Cemeteries as urban forests, now and in the future’.  Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 48 :126564.

Rae,Ruth A. (2021).  ‘Cemeteries as public urban green space: Management, funding and form’.  Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 61 :1–9, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127078

Reimers,Eva. (1999).  ‘Death and identity: Graves and funerals as cultural communication’.  Mortality 4 (2) :147–166, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713685976

Richardson,Laurel. (2000).  ‘New writing practices in qualitative research’.  Sociology of Sport Journal 17 :5–20, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/ssj.17.1.5

Rothstein,Karla, Staudt,ChristinaChristina(ed s .), . (2021).  The Future of the Corpse: Changing Ecologies of Death and Disposition. Santa Barbara:Praeger.

Rugg,Julie. (2000).  ‘Defining the place of burial: What makes a cemetery a cemetery?’.  Mortality 5 (3) :259–275, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713686011

Rugg,Julie. (1998).  ‘A few remarks on modern sepulture: Current trends and new directions in cemetery research’.  Mortality 3 (2) :111–128, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713685888

Rugg,Julie Joyce. (2022).  ‘Further remarks on modern sepulture: Twenty years of cemetery studies and eight core questions defining cemetery research’.  Eastern and Northern European Journal of Death Studies 1 (1) :16–46.

Samur,İlkyaz; Uysal,V Şafak. (2023).  ‘Digital ecologies, performative interiors, pandemic times’.  Paper presented at Interior Ecologies – International Symposium, 20–21 December, https://www.interiorecologies.com. Accessed 30 April 2025

Schulz,Dana. (2014).  ‘Peeking into the East Village’s marble cemeteries’.  6sqft New York City. October172014 https://www.6sqft.com/peeking-into-the-east-villages-marble-cemeteries. Accessed 30 April 2025

Shields,Rob. (2002).  Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London:Routledge.

Skar,Margrete; Nordh,Helena; Swensen,Grete. (2018).  ‘Green urban cemeteries: More than just parks’.  Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 11 (3) :362–382, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2018.1470104

Sloane,David C. (1991).  The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History. London:John Hopkins University Press.

Snyder,Alison B. (2022).  ‘The designed and the ad hoc: Dynamic remakings of street space in New York City’.  Architecture_MPS 23 (1) :1–21, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14324/111.444.amps.2022v23i1.002

Snyder,Alison B. (January–April 2021).  ‘Interiorism as a means to go forward in designing for the adaptable city’.  Strategic Design Research Journal 14 (1) :372–389, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4013/sdrj.2021.141.31

Sørensen,Tim F. (2009).  ‘The presence of the dead: Cemeteries, cremation and the staging of non-place’.  Journal of Social Archaeology 9 (1) :110–135, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605308099373

Stavrides,Stavros. (2010).  Towards the City of Thresholds. Trento:Professional Dreamers.

Tabb,Phillip James. (2024).  Thin Place Design: Architecture of the Numinous. New York:Routledge.

Taylor,Mark, Preston,JulieannaJulieanna(ed s .), . (2006).  Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader. Chichester:John Wiley & Sons.

Treib,Marc. (2008).  Drawing/Thinking: Confronting an Electronic Age. New York:Routledge.

Turner,Victor. (1970).  ‘Betwixt and between: The liminal period in rites of passage’.  The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press.

Upton,Dell. (2008).  Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic. New Haven:Yale University Press.

Van Gennep,Arnold. (1960).  The Rites of Passage. Chicago:The University of Chicago Press.

Warf,Barney, Arias,SantaSanta(ed s .), . (2009).  The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London:Routledge.

Winter,Jay. (1995).  Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. Cambridge:University Press.

Withers,Charles W J. (2009).  ‘Place and the “spatial turn” in geography and in history’.  Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (4) :637–658, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jhi.0.0054

Worpole,Ken. (1997).  The Cemetery in the City. Gloucester:Comedia.

Young,Craig; Light,Duncan. (2016).  ‘Interrogating spaces of and for the dead as “alternative space”: Cemeteries, corpses and sites of dark tourism’.  International Review of Social Research 6 (2) :61–72, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2016-0009

Young,Greg. (2013).  ‘Manhattan’s forgotten graveyards, under public parks, famous hotels and supermarkets’.  HuffPost. October302013 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/manhattans-forgotten-graveyards_b_4171691. Accessed 30 April 2025