Schaerbeek Cemetery

Schaerbeek Cemetery is a public, non-denominational burial ground administratively belonging to the municipality of Schaerbeek, even though it does not physically lie within its borders. Instead, the site sits in the neighbouring municipality of Evere and partly in Sint-Stevens-Woluwe, a village that forms part of Zaventem in Flemish Brabant. This unusual arrangement — a cemetery named after a municipality it doesn't geographically touch — reflects how Brussels-area local authorities historically solved the problem of finding burial space once their own territory became too built-up. The main entrance to the cemetery is on the Evere side, along Avenue Jules Bordet.

The cemetery opened in 1952, at a time when Schaerbeek's authorities needed a new communal burial site outside the municipality's densely built centre. This was a common pattern in post-war Brussels urban planning: municipal cemeteries were pushed to the outskirts, onto land that was still undeveloped, even if that meant crossing into a neighbour's territory. The layout of the site reflects the modernist zoning approach typical of that period in Brussels, when urban functions — housing, industry, green space, and burial grounds — were treated as separable zones to be planned and allocated across the expanding metropolitan area.

As a non-denominational public cemetery, Schaerbeek Cemetery serves as a burial place for residents of the municipality regardless of religious affiliation, following the Belgian tradition of communal cemeteries kept distinct from parish burial grounds and open to all citizens of the municipality they serve. The site's management model also involves an element of public participation in its upkeep, setting it apart from more purely administrative, top-down managed necropolises.

One notable feature of the location is its close proximity to two other cemeteries: Brussels Cemetery (Cimetière de Bruxelles) and Evere Cemetery (Cimetière d'Evere). All three burial grounds sit close together in the north-eastern part of Brussels, forming an extensive belt of cemetery land in that part of the city. This proximity can be a source of confusion for visitors, since Schaerbeek Cemetery is sometimes mistaken for one of its neighbours despite being a separate, independently managed site.

The cemetery's position — straddling the border between the Brussels-Capital Region and Flemish Brabant — also makes it a geographically split site in administrative terms: part of the grounds lie within the Brussels-Capital Region, while another part falls within the Flemish Region, in the municipality of Zaventem. This division is a direct result of how municipal boundaries developed historically across the Brussels metropolitan area, where cemetery land was often established wherever a sufficiently large, undeveloped plot could be found, regardless of which administrative unit it technically belonged to.

For anyone interested in the urban planning history of Brussels and how the city dealt with organising public space in the post-war decades, Schaerbeek Cemetery is a practical example of a densely built municipality solving a land-use problem by cooperating with neighbouring administrative units to secure space outside its own borders. The site's coordinates (50.869, 4.425) place it in a green belt north-east of central Brussels, close to Zaventem Airport.

Frequently asked questions

Is Schaerbeek Cemetery located in the municipality of Schaerbeek? No — despite its name, the cemetery administratively belonging to Schaerbeek is physically situated in Evere and partly in Sint-Stevens-Woluwe, part of the municipality of Zaventem.

When was the cemetery established? It opened in 1952.

Is it a religious cemetery? No, it is a public, non-denominational cemetery open to all residents of the municipality.

What other cemeteries border this site? It directly adjoins Brussels Cemetery and Evere Cemetery, and together the three form a large cemetery area in this part of the city.