CIMETIÈRE DE BUTEL

This 75 ha cemetery (Гробишта Бутел/Grobišta Butel) is the largest in the Skopje metropolitan area. Among the thousands of graves is that of Georgios Zorbas (1865-1941), famous for inspiring the writer Nikos Kazantzakis to write his short story Zorba the Greek in 1946. Embodied by Anthony Quinn dancing the sirtaki in the 1964 film of the same name, Georgios Zorbas was first a miner, then a monk in Greece, before becoming a mine owner in the Skopje region at the end of his life. Thus, the tomb of one of the great figures of Greek folklore is located here, south of the cemetery (GPS: 42.034575, 21.435675). Rediscovered in 1997, the grave is simple, white and bears the name of the Janda family (Јанда): it houses Georgios Zorbas (Георгиос Зорбас) but also his grandchildren Konstantinida and Jovan Janda, who died in the 1960s. In addition, the Butel cemetery has two important monuments. To the east stands the elegant Monument to the Victims of the 1963 Earthquake. Opened in 1973 and designed by Jordan Grabulovski, who designed the Makedonium in Kruševo, it hosts an official ceremony on July 26, the date of the earthquake that killed 1,070 people in Skopje in 1963. A little further south stands the large Partisan Monument (1964) designed by the Croatian architect Dimitrije Mita Mladenović (b. 1936). Two ceremonies are held here: on May 9 for the celebrations of the end of World War II and on March 11 in memory of the deportation of Macedonian Jews in 1943.