Old cemetery at Pęksowy Brzyzek

The oldest necropolis of Zakopane, established around 1850 through the efforts of Father Józef Stolarczyk near the first church. Before that, Zakopane residents were buried in the cemeteries of Chochołów and Poronin. In the early years of the 19th century, after the construction of the so-called Gąsienica chapel, the dead were occasionally buried in its vicinity, e.g. according to the will of the chapel's founder, Paweł Gąsienica.

The Old Cemetery - according to popular opinion - was established on a plot of land located on the steep bank of a stream ("brzyzek"), donated for this purpose by Jan Pęksa, hence the popular name - "Pęksowy Brzyzek". In 1889, Dr Tytus Chałubiński was buried here, which marked the beginning of a new period in the history of the cemetery, which ceased to be an ordinary village cemetery and soon became one of the most important Polish necropolises. Local mountaineers, mountaineers, people of culture and tuberculosis patients who died at Giewont were buried there. In 1931, the provincial governor of Krakow recognised the Old Cemetery as a cultural monument, and since then the provincial conservator of monuments has given permission for each burial. Most of the newly buried here are people of merit for Zakopane and Poland, hence the Old Cemetery is often called the Cemetery of Merit.

During the occupation, the area of the cemetery was reduced by more than a quarter, with a road leading through the eastern part of the area, adjacent to the stream, to the lower station of the cable car to Gubałówka. Graves from this area were exhumed and moved to other parts of the cemetery.

At present, there are approximately 320 graves in the Old Cemetery. The graves of Józef Stolarczyk, the Pawlikowski family, Tytus Chałubiński, Jan Krzeptowski Sabała, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Władysław Orkan, Kazimierz Tetmajer, Włodzimierz Wnuk, Antoni Kenar, Józef Kapeniak, Antoni Rząsa, Karol Stryjeński, Kazimierz Dłuski, Maciej Sieczka, Józef Krzeptowski, Jędrzej Wali, Tadeusz Bocheński, Józef Fedorowicz, Jan Długosz, Tomasz Gluziński, Jan Pasierb-Orland, Adam Pach, Kornel Makuszyński, Marian Raciborski, Karol Kłosowski, Stanisław Nędza-Kubiński, Helena Marusarzówna, Stefan, Tadeusz and Zofia Zwoliński, as well as symbolic graves of, inter alia, Mariusz Zaruski, Tadeusz and Zofia Zwoliński.Among others, symbolic graves of Mariusz Zaruski, Bronisław Czech, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.

The Old Cemetery is looked after by the Holy Family Parish and the Zakopane Municipal Office. Conservation of the monuments is carried out by the Society for the Care of Monuments, in cooperation with the Tatra Museum and the Technical School of Regional Construction in Zakopane.