File:Celtic Cross - Glasnevin Cemetery (4513047058).jpg

Glasnevin Cemetery is the setting for the "Hades" episode in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Glasnevin Cemetery, officially known as Prospect Cemetery, is the largest nondenominational cemetery in Ireland. It first opened in 1832 and is located in Glasnevin, Dublin.

The main part of the cemetery, with its trademark high walls and watchtowers, is located on one side of the road from Finglas to the city centre, while the other part, "St. Paul's," is located across the road and beyond a green space, between two railway lines.

Prior to the establishment of Glasnevin Cemetery, Irish Catholics had no cemeteries of their own in which to bury their dead and as the repressive Penal Laws of the eighteenth century placed heavy restrictions on the public performance of Catholic services, it had become normal practice for Catholics to conduct a limited version of their own funeral services in Protestant cemeteries. This situation continued until an incident at a funeral held at St. Kevin's Cemetery in 1825, provoked public outcry when a Protestant sexton reprimanded a Catholic priest for proceeding to perform a limited version of a funeral mass.

The outcry prompted Daniel O'Connell, champion of Catholic rights, to launch a campaign and prepare a legal opinion proving that there was actually no law passed forbidding praying for a dead Catholic in a graveyard. O'Connell pushed for the opening of a burial ground in which both Irish Catholics and Protestants could give their dead dignified burial.

Glasnevin Cemetery contains many historically interesting monuments as well as the graves of many of Ireland's most prominent national figures — Charles Stewart Parnell and Daniel O'Connell as well as Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith, Maude Gonne, Kevin Barry, Sir Roger Casement, Constance Markiewicz, Brendan Behan, Seán MacBride, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Christy Brown, Frank Duff, Luke Kelly of the Dubliners. Boyzone singer Stephen Gately was cremated at Glasnevin Crematorium, which is located within the cemetery grounds, on October 17th, 2009.

The cemetery also offers a view of the changing style of death monuments in Ireland over the last 200 years: from the austere, simple, high stone erections of the period up until the 1860s, to the elaborate Celtic crosses of the nationalistic revival from the 1860s to 1960s, to the plain Italian marble of the late twentieth century. Glasnevin Cemetery has grown from its original nine to over 120 acres.