Founded in 1801 and the final resting place of many of the country’s social elite, this extraordinary cemetery stretched over a large area divided by a main road is still in use today, providing an extraordinary snapshot of the cultural history of the city. Hidden away here find the artist and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), the author and publicist Jonas Basanavičius (1851-1927), whose grave is inscribed with a peculiar, 19th-century version of Lithuanian that predates its written standardisation, and the heart of Marshall Józef Piłsudski (1867-1935), the local-born Polish general who played a key role in re-establishing Polish independence in 1918 as well as the country’s subsequent annexation of Vilnius in 1920.  Buried with his mother under a black granite slab and surrounded by the graves of Polish soldiers, the rest of him lies in Poland’s most sacred burial place under Kraków’s Wawel Cathedral.