"There's a different reason why someone would come here than, say, Pere Lachaise," says Marilyn Yolam, author of The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds. "…there's nothing else like it in the United States. You cannot help but have a sense of American history and patriotism."  Many come to see the grave of John F. Kennedy, but there's something about the fields filled with 360,000 small white tablets, each one marking the grave of a U.S. soldier, that is unforgettable.

Today it may be crawling with text-messaging zombies, but Manhattan was once littered with gravesites. As property values increased, cemetery landowners sold their lands and transferred the graves to Queens (mostly to Calvary Cemetery). But there are a few remaining cemeteries in Manhattan and one of the most enchanting (and a favorite of Marilyn Yolam, author of The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds, is Trinity Churchyard, established in 1697. Located where Wall Street and Broadway meet, Trinity's graves are scattered around the church of the same name. Some tombstones have been broken in half, leaving the visitor with a haunted feeling. "You can really get a feel for the 18th century here," says Yolam.

Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Alice B. Toklas, Richard Wright, and, of course, Jim Morrison are but a few of the permanent residents of this famed Paris cemetery. But the real draw is leafy and elegant surroundings in this nature-meets-art setting. In fact, as Marilyn Yalom, author of the recently published book, The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds, explains, Pere Lachaise was the archetype of all rural cemeteries in 19th-century America.

The first "garden cemetery" in the United States is also one of its most beautiful. Buckminster Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and B.F. Skinner are among the scores of legendary Americans resting here. The grounds themselves are worth the price of admission (which, by the way, is free). The large tombstones of various shapes and sizes and classical monuments mingle harmoniously with the lush landscape.

Nicknamed the "Isle of the Dead," that's exactly what San Michele is. Located a few minutes by boat from Venice, the red-walled isle of San Michele is the city's main cemetery. It's also one of the most prestigious places in the world to be buried (Ezra Pound, Igor Stravinsky, and Joseph Brodsky are interred here). "It's mystical and evocative," says John Berendt, who spent a lot of time on San Michele away from Venice's madding crowds when he was working on the book City of Falling Angels.

This palm tree-studded burial yard is more than just a place where the dead are resting. Hollywood Forever is not only unique for the plethora of famous people buried here, but for all the activities for the living. Movies are shown, plays are performed, and tours are given. Two former members of the punk band The Ramones, Bugsy Siegel, and Douglas Fairbanks are a few of the celeb-starring graves here.

There are fewer memorable and more evocative spots anywhere on the planet than Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery. Located smack in the center of the city's old Jewish ghetto, this block-sized graveyard has up to 12,000 people buried in it. The tilting, crammed-together tombstones are the highlight to visiting this famous site which was founded in the first half of the 15th century. "…[I]t is one of the saddest and eeriest urban sites I know of," says famed Irish author John Banville, who penned a travel book on the Czech capital, Prague Pictures: A Portrait of the City.

Perhaps the most famous cemetery on the continent, La Recoleta is a huge tourist draw, mostly for one gravesite: Eva Peron's. But, Tony Perrottet, former Buenos Aires resident and author of Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped, explains that the journey to Peron's tomb is the real tour de force here: "You walk past giant marble angels and statues of children that had been plucked from their mother's side cruelly by fate. I think the ambience of the place is very alluring." 

Ever wonder where cowboys went when they died? Once upon a time in the West, all cemeteries looked something like Boothill, its simple cross gravestones replete with small mounds of rocks piled in front of each grave simply informed the visitor of who they were looking at: "Here lies Lester Moore, Four Slugs from a 44. No Less, No More."

Founded in 1789 just outside of the French Quarter, this graveyard was made famous when it appeared in the 1969 Dennis Hopper film Easy Rider. The graves are above ground because of ground water, giving the impression that the tombs are tiny houses. Notable inhabitants include famed Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau and one-time chess champ Paul Morphy.