Cmentarz Świętego Rocha, Częstochowa

St. Roch Cemetery in Częstochowa - necropolis located on the eastern border of the Lisiniec district. It is the oldest active cemetery in Poland.

There are several theories about the origin of the cemetery: the cemetery of pilgrims who died on their way to Jasna Gora, an infectious cemetery intended for the dead during epidemics; this theory may be supported by the fact that St. Roch was supposed to protect against infectious diseases

The first burials took place in 1641. The cemetery was enlarged in 1737 and two years later the first brick tombs appeared. In 1767 it was first surrounded by a wall, later ruined and rebuilt. The cemetery contains historic tombstones from 1849-1906.

In 1898 an Orthodox cemetery was separated from its territory, but after independence the area was returned to Catholics.

The first chapel in the cemetery was built in the years 1641-1642. Destroyed during the Swedish Deluge, it was replaced by the current church of St. Roch and St. Sebastian, built in its place. In 1739 it was renovated, and in 1771, during the Bar Confederates' fights, it was plundered. Rebuilt in the years 1783-1785, when the highest part of the tower was dismantled, two towers were added on the sides and a sacristy was erected. Until 1880 it was served by Pauline monks. It has features of a baroque building. It has one nave.

In the cemetery chapel there is a plaque commemorating Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Next to the chapel there is a symbolic grave-monument with an open book with the names of people connected with the conspiracy and killed during the occupation or in the period of the Polish People's Republic. On the cemetery there are also noteworthy a war grave of Silesian insurgents killed in 1921, graves of insurgents from 1863, a mass war grave of 13 victims of Nazi terror, including 10 hostages shot in the Wieluñski Market Square on November 1, 1943, a war grave of German soldiers, war grave of German, Austrian and Russian soldiers killed between 1915-1918, a mass grave of soldiers of the resistance movement killed in 1944 and victims of the Nazi terror killed in 1939, a symbolic grave of the brothers Jerzy, Rajmund and Wlodzimierz Sosnowski killed during World War II

There is also a separate part of the cemetery complex forming a separate Evangelical-Augsburg cemetery with a section of German soldiers killed during World War I.