Garden Week: Cementerio Municipal José María Azael Franco Guerrero
4/24/202612 min
The José María Azael Franco Guerrero Cemetery in Tulcán, Ecuador is a topiary anomaly and a lush green paradise for the dead. This week, we’re celebrating the arrival of spring with classic and new stories about unusual gardens around the world.
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First 90 secondsDylan Thuras· Host0:00
[birds chirping] [horn honks] We're in the city of Tulcan in Ecuador. It's a cool, misty day, as it very often is in Tulcan and we are high up in the mountains, 9,000 feet, and just a quick hop from the border with Colombia. So raincoats on, hoods up, we're walking around the city and we come to an entrance of a labyrinth. [gentle music] This labyrinth is made of green sculptures. They're carved so finely they look like stone covered with moss. But up close, you can see that they're alive. This dense maze is created by lush green hedges. An herbal, evergreen smell fills the air around you. This isn't just some park. This is a cemetery. One so beautiful, its creator once said, "It invites one to die." I'm Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And today, we are taking you to a paradise for the dead, the Jose Maria Azael Franco Guerrero Cemetery in Tulcan, Ecuador. That's story after this.