The Museum of Cemetery Arts houses an original and inimitable tombstone and small architecture collection. Among tomb monuments one can distinguish various small forms of the art such as steles, columns, obelisks, stone tree trunks and sarcophaguses. Amongst the larger forms of the art form to be found there are: mausoleum chapels, sepulchers in the forms of portico, portals, with canopy etc.

The cemetery was founded in 1856, but the oldest tombstone in the museum was built on the 4th of August 1202 in Olawskie Przedmiescie for Rabbi David. It was found at the beginning of our century and then moved to Slezna Street where it can be admired together with other monuments from the Middle Ages.

Whilst Sightseeing in the Old Jewish Cemetery visitors can take note of several distinguished personages who have been buried there:

• Ferdinand LaSalle (1825-1864) a prominent theoretician of socialism and the founder of the first labor party in Germany.
• Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891) a founder of the historical school
• Ferdinan Cohn (1828-1898) a world famous botanist; an associate of Robert Koch
• Hemann Cohn (1836-1906) a well-known ophthalmologist
• Leopold Auerbach (1828-1897) a world renowned biologist
• Frederike Kempner (1828- 1904) a notable Silesian poetess
• August and Siegfried Stein - parents of Edith Stein, known since 1998 as Saint Theresa Benedict of the Crossy