London, England

Focus on Bunhill Fields Burial Ground:  The Pilgrim's Progress was first published in 1678 and has never been out of print. Its celebrated author was John Bunyan, who died ten years later. What you see below is neither his original burial plot nor his original tomb. In the 1860s, however, his celebrity status had generated such a pilgrimage trail that a new vault, based on the original but without the effigy or bas reliefs, was commissioned by one of the well-known sculptors of the day. As he lies looking upward at the heavens (the ultimate goal of pilgrims' progress), an recumbent reincarnated Bunyan serves as the centerpiece of London's famous mortuary garden. [2015]