First opened in 1840 and moved to its current location in 1895, the cemetery contains the war dead from countless campaigns from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 to those who fell during the Great Patriotic War. The cemetery also contains the graves of several notable figures in Belarusian culture including that of the poet and writer Yanka Kupala (1882-1942), whose name crops up in several places around the capital.