Mitinskoe Cemetery

Mitinskoe Cemetery (Russian: Митинское кладбище) is a cemetery located in Moscow's North-Western administrative district. It was established on September 15, 1978. A Russian Orthodox church, which was built in 1998, is located on its grounds and has been visited several times by Patriarch Alexius II. The cemetery has a total area of 1,080,000 m² (11,600,000 sq ft) and is the final resting place of 28 firefighters who died of burns while putting out the flames of the Chernobyl disaster, as well as eminent Soviet and Russian cultural, scientific, and military figures (including several Heroes of the Soviet Union and Russian Federation). Each year at 10 a.m. on September 3, crowds gather at the cemetery and light thousands of candles in memory of the victims of the Beslan school hostage crisis.