Tag:amenity=place_of_mourning

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Public-images-osm logo.svg amenity = place_of_mourning
Funérarium de Wasquehal.jpg
Description
A room or building where families and friends can come, before the funeral, and view the body of the person who has died. Show/edit corresponding data item.
Group: amenities
Used on these elements
may be used on nodesshould not be used on waysmay be used on areas (and multipolygon relations)should not be used on relations (except multipolygon relations)
Useful combination
See also
Status: approvedPage for proposal

The tag amenity=place_of_mourning is used to map a room or building where families and friends can come, before the funeral, and view the body of the person who has died. Depending on countries, they may be public or commercial premises.

If such an amenity is ancillary to some other tagged amenity or a shop, such as funeral directors or a crematorium, and it doesn't seem possible or appropriate to tag them apart, you can use the subtag place_of_mourning=yes instead.

How to map

Draw a node node or an area area and tag with amenity=place_of_mourning.

Description

Amenities for viewing the dead can be found in varying kinds in different countries. They are often called chapels of rest in Britain, in France they are funérariums. Amenities should be identified with this tag if their main purpose is to give a dignified setting for families and friends to go and visit the deceased person before the funeral. This means that the following need to be distinguished from these amenities:

What this tag is not

As the key indicates, shop=funeral_directors are shops. They are businesses where coffins are sold and arrangements for funerals made. Depending on the country, it may be very common that they also have rooms for viewing the deceased as covered by the tag place of mourning (in which cases a subtag as mentioned above may of course be adequate). In other countries it may be rare for funeral directors to have such rooms (e.g. because they are available on the cemetery). The two features therefore need to be clearly distinguished.

Likewise, the amenities tagged as amenity=funeral_hall are defined as used for funeral ceremonies (typically on the day of the burial). As more people will generally attend such a ceremony at the same time, they will normally be bigger halls than the rooms for viewing the deceased. Again, in some places, both can be in the same building (a ceremonial hall with cooled storage and viewing rooms behind, so that the coffin will only have to be moved a short distance just before the ceremony - in which case as well a subtag may of course be adequate), but there are also a lot of funeral halls without such viewing rooms and a lot of the latter without any premises for ceremonies, meaning that both features need to be distinguished.

Finally, an amenity=mortuary (morgue), defined as "a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification or removal for autopsy or disposal by burial, cremation or other method" is not essentially a place for viewing but for storing corpses. While the two concepts can of course in certain cases overlap, a lot of morgues exist in hospitals or forensic services, where they are technical rooms unsuited for the kind of dignified "viewing" that takes place in premises called chapels of rest or funérariums.

See also