page_title: Colon Cemetery, Havana
section_title: Interments
hierarchical_section_title: Colon Cemetery, Havana / Interments
caption_attribution_description: English: Colon Cemetery_Floor Plan. Havana, Cuba. 1915. Enrique Martinez, Engineer/
context_page_description: El Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón, also called La Necrópolis de Cristóbal Colón, was founded in 1876 in the Vedado neighbourhood of Havana, Cuba to replace the Espada Cemetery in the Barrio de San Lázaro. Named for Christopher Columbus, the cemetery is noted for its many elaborately sculpted memorials. It is estimated the cemetery has more than 500 major mausoleums. Before the Espada Cemetery and the Colon Cemetery were built, interments took place in crypts at the various churches throughout Havana, for example, at the Havana Cathedral or the Iglesia del Espíritu Santo in Havana Vieja.
context_section_description: The Colon Cemetery has a monument to the firefighters who lost their lives in the great fire of May 17, 1890. 
  As baseball is a leading sport in Cuba, the cemetery has two monuments to baseball players from the Cuban League. The first was erected in 1942 and the second in 1951 for members of the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame.
  In February 1898, the recovered bodies of sailors who died on the United States Navy battleship Maine were interred in the Colon Cemetery. In December 1899 the bodies were disinterred and brought back to the United States for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
  Also buried here are three British Commonwealth servicemen who are commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; a Canadian Army officer of World War I, and a Royal Engineers officer and Royal Canadian Navy seaman of World War II. The remains of the casualties are located in the mausoleum of the Anglo-American Welfare Association, with the names inscribed on the central memorial which also forms the entrance to the underground ossuary.
caption: Floor plan of the Colon Cemetery. 1915. Enrique Martinez, Engineer
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