HISTORY'S A GRAVE MATTER IN CEMETERIES.

Byline: Gary A. Warner Orange County Register

With their rain-etched marble monuments and sad laments for long-lost loves, graveyards are an intriguing window for explorers into the local soul.

It might seem a bit ghoulish to include acres of dead people on a vacation itinerary. But for students of history and culture, graveyards are rich repositories. How the dead are remembered says much about the living.

Here are a few of the more intriguing cemeteries I've found in my treks around the country and the world:

London: Communism may be dying and its progenitor is long dead, dead, dead. Karl Marx's tomb in Highgate Cemetery is marked by a huge bust of the brooding author of ``Das Kapital.'' Also, check out the Egyptian Avenue with its long row of obelisks over catacombs below. Nearby Hampstead Heath is one of the loveliest places to walk in all the city.

Paris: Leafy, quiet Le Pere Lachaise cemetery houses dozens of famous dead. Moliere, Honore de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, and Frederic Chopin are among the greats sprinkled among its 105 acres. The most popular draw is the graffiti-slathered grave of former Doors front man Jim Morrison. Hurry to see it, though; his family is considering bringing his body back to the United States.

Rome: One of the spookiest sights in all of Europe is Santa Maria dell' Orazione e della Morte on the Via Giulia in Rome. Skulls and bones of dead monks are displayed in an ornate vault, meant by the Catholic brothers to be an object lesson on mortality.

``As you are, we once were; as we are, you will be'' is etched in the wall.

Ireland: The Emerald Isle is famous for its brooding, crumbling graveyards overgrown with high grass. The most atmospheric of Eire's cemetery collection is Monasterboice in County Louth. Since the fifth century, monks and nuns have been buried here, next to the ruins of two churches, a round tower and three massive Celtic crosses. Muiredach's Cross, erected in the 10th century, is among the great treasures of Ireland.

Los Angeles: Faux medieval church. Faux Greek temple. Faux Michelangelo's David. Everything is a fake at Forest Lawn, the cemetery-cum-tourist attraction in Glendale. Except it's the only place you can find the real Clark Gable, W.C. Fields and Jean Harlow. They're among the famous and obscure Hollywood talents buried among the peaceful hills.

San Francisco: The beautiful Presidio is best known as the former home of the Sixth Army. But in a small corner of the vast forested base are tiny flower-strewn gravestones that mark the final resting places of many San Franciscans' beloved dogs and cats. The often-whimsical collection is tough to find, so ask for directions at the visitors center.

New Orleans: Marble and granite skyscrapers mark the burial grounds of the elite of the Big Easy. Living below sea level makes subterranean graves a watery no-no. The result is quirky collections of obelisks and slabs meant to immortalize the colorful, corrupt and now-forgotten citizens of the city.

Crime and tall fences have made many graveyards unsafe. Lafayette Cemetery on Prytania Street in the Garden District is one of the better choices. Check with Save Our Cemeteries, [phone], to see whether any are hosting an ``open house'' during your visit.

New York: Queens is called the ``Borough of Graves'' for its many cemeteries - but the most intriguing cemetery in town is in lower Manhattan. Trinity Church's graveyard at Broadway and Wall Street dates to 1776. Alexander Hamilton, of $10-bill and Aaron-Burr-duel fame, and steamboat inventor Robert Fulton are among those buried here.

Boston: The King's Chapel and Granary graveyards are impressive pieces of history, but the city's most interesting graveyard is Copp's Hill Burying Ground in the North End. Not only does it have the last remains of noted Colonial killjoy Cotton Mather, the pre-Revolutionary enforcer of morality, but it also was used by the Redcoats for artillery during the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Washington, D.C.: Across the Potomac River from the nation's capital is Arlington Cemetery, with more than 200,000 Americans - the great, the forgotten and the unknown.

During the Civil War, the Union Army captured the home of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and converted it into a graveyard. It is the site of the Tomb of the Unknown Servicemen, as well as the tombs of President Kennedy, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, band leader John Philip Sousa, boxer Joe Lewis, mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, and Nazi scientist-turned-American scientist Wernher von Braun.

Baltimore: The small cemetery at the corner of Greene and Fayette streets looks like something out of a spooky Edgar Allen Poe story. So no surprise that the gloomy author lies here, under a tombstone with a carved raven and a single word: ``Nevermore.''

Barre, Vt.: Perhaps the oddest graveyard in all of the United States, the Hope Cemetery features delicately carved headstones, including representations of a soccer ball and a stock car. There also are lifelike flowers, giggling cherubs, and intertwined lovers.

The carvings are the work of local artisans using rock from the nearby Rock of Ages quarry to fashion stone epitaphs for granite workers and other townspeople.

Other great graveyards: La Recoleta in Buenos Aires; Old City of Jerusalem; San Michele in Venice; Grant's Tomb in New York; Napoleon's Tomb in Paris; Boot Hill in Tombstone, Ariz.; Town Burial Ground in Fort William, Scotland; Royal Mausoleum and the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

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Photo: New Orleans' above-ground crypts and monuments remind of the city's high water table, making traditional underground burials impossible.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News