A short walk away, the black cross of Baron Samedi, the voodoo spirit of the dead, has cracked at its base and tumbled to the ground.

"I saw the tombs fall one by one," said Elmont Cherig, a 36-year-old security guard at the cemetery who was working at the time of last month's massive earthquake. His wife was among the more than 200,000 people killed.

Port-au-Prince's above-ground cemeteries -- virtual cities of the dead and symbols of Haitian culture -- have taken a heavy hit from last month's earthquake.

Many of their brightly painted mausoleums, in disrepair even before the earthquake, lie spread over the ground.

It is a small concern in comparison to the suffering here after the January 12 catastrophe, but it represents another part of Haiti lying in ruin.

The "grand" cemetery in the capital houses the grave sites of well-known Haitians, including former dictator Francois Duvalier, though his tomb was long ago ransacked and his coffin is gone.

It is at once inviting and haunting, the tombs closely packed together, the crosses on top of them along with the ironwork and marble decoration rising into the air, forming silent, narrow corridors.

There seemed to be almost no one there on a recent afternoon.

In one area, the ground has opened up as if there had been a landslide and part of the wall dividing the cemetery from the street has fallen. The stench of rotting flesh is nearly unbearable.

Two more skulls sat next to a broken blue coffin -- though whether they were there lying in the open before the quake is difficult to say.

It is clear that the earthquake knocked down the church, with the roof and huge parts of the walls gone, yet the altar made of white and blue tile somehow still intact, slumping plants in pots on the ground next to it.

The iron frame of a painted window depicting the crucifixion of Jesus has held up, though many of the panes are missing, leaving the image incomplete.

Cherig said he lay down on the ground when the quake struck to protect himself. He later found out that his house collapsed.

"My wife died. My sister was hurt," he said. His three kids were outside at the time and survived.

While the "grand" cemetery is its most well-known, Port-au-Prince is dotted with similar such places.

In the suburb of Petionville, a cemetery's front wall has collapsed, revealing a perfectly aligned row of tombs before a busy street.

Their colors are different -- gray, blue and beige -- but the crosses on top and the tombs themselves are roughly all the same size.

Further inside, both because of what employees said was work to move the cemetery before January 12 and because of damage from the quake, there are disturbing sights.

The body of one man has been placed inside a tomb without a coffin and nothing has been done to seal it, his feet, still wearing white athletic socks, poking out.

Everywhere seems to smell like rotting death. There is so much destruction in one section, it seems as though an explosion ripped through it.

In another open tomb, the coffin is broken, revealing the clasped, wrinkled hands of the dead person.

Jean Robert Moise, 28, was working here at the time of the quake as one of the caretakers and rubble rained down on his arm and back, leaving him with small fractures, he said.

"I went to the hospital and I didn't get any help," said Moise. The news from his family was worse: one of his children, a three-year-old, was killed.

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