It was founded earlier than the grand national cemeteries: Powązki in Warsaw (1802) and in the same year as Lviv's famous cemetery in Łyczaków. The cemetery was opened on 5 November 1787 and its oldest tombstone dates from 1820. Numerous monuments of sepulchral art can be found here, including a chapel-tomb of St. Stanisław (first half of the 19th century), a grave of the victims of the Galician Slaughter (1846), a memorial-tombstone of the victims of a mine fire (1875/1876), and a figure of an angel of death on the grave of the Tadla family. Its area enloses also a war cemetery designed by Karl Schölich, where Austrian, German and Russian soldiers fallen in World War I were buried. In the northern part, there are three graves of soldiers of the September 1939 campaign; they died in Bochnia as a result of their wounds. Soviet soldiers are buried in the cemetery as well.