Skogskyrkogården
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| UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
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| Location |
Sweden 
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| Criteria | (ii), (iv)
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| Reference | 558 |
| Coordinates | 59°16′32″N 18°05′58″E / 59.275555555556°N 18.099444444444°E |
| Inscription | 1994 (18th Session) |
| Website | |
 Location of Skogskyrkogården
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Skogskyrkogården (official name in English: The Woodland Cemetery ) is a cemetery located in the Enskededalen district south of central , Sweden. Its design, by Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, reflects the development of architecture from Nordic Classicism to mature functionalism.
Skogskyrkogården came about following an international competition in 1915 for the design of a new cemetery in Enskede in the southern part of , Sweden. The entry called "Tallum" by the young architects Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz was selected. After changes made to the design on the recommendations of the competition jury, work began in 1917 on land that had been old gravel quarries that were overgrown with pine trees, and the first phase was completed three years later. The architects' use of the natural landscape created an extraordinary environment of tranquil beauty that had a profound influence on cemetery design throughout the world. Essential models for the design of the cemetery were the German forest cemeteries of Friedhof Ohlsdorf at Hamburg and Waldfriedhof in Munich but also the neoclassical paintings of Caspar David Friedrich.
The basis for the route through the cemetery is a long route leading from the ornamental colonnaded entrance that then splits, one way leading through a pastoral landscape, complete with a large pond and a tree-lined meditation hill, and the other up to a large detached granite cross and the abstract portico of the crematorium and the chapels of the Holy Cross, Faith, and Hope. The paths then rejoin and pass along a dead-straight path through a dense grove of tall pine trees, the so-called Way of Seven Wells, leading to the "Uppståndelsekapellet" or Resurrection Chapel. The giant dark granite cross at the focus of the vista from the main entrance has also been described has having been based on a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, titled "Cross on the Baltic Sea" (1815), signifying hope in an abandoned world; yet Asplund and Lewerentz insisted that the cross was open to non-Christian interpretations, even quoting Friedrich: "To those who see it as such, a consolation, to those who do not, simply a cross."
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