Woodlawn Cemetery

If you only visit one cemetery in Detroit, make it this one. Woodlawn opened in 1895 on 140 rolling acres along Woodward, and in the years since it’s quietly become the city’s hall of fame in repose — auto barons, mayors, poets and, above all, a staggering roll call of Motown royalty all rest here. The grounds are genuinely beautiful and genuinely historic: Albert Kahn designed the 1905 mortuary chapel that, after Rosa Parks was laid there in 2005, was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.

Wander and you’ll pass the Dodge brothers’ temple-like mausoleum, the Ford family, and the graves of Aretha Franklin, James Jamerson, Levi Stubbs and more — a whole afternoon of Detroit’s story told in stone. It’s an active cemetery, so go with the reverence you’d want at your own family’s plot: quiet, unhurried, respectful. We haven’t made the full pilgrimage yet, but it’s high on our list — and we’ll be documenting the notable graves one by one. Come for the history; stay for the strange, settling peace of the place.