The largest cemetery in Poland, and the third in Europe, and one of the largest in the world (currently 172 ha) - officially opened on December 6, 1901. Modeled on the necropolises of Hamburg and Vienna. The design was made by the city architect Wilhelm Meyer-Schwartau (1854-1935). The modern organization of the cemetery, which initially had an area of 64 hectares, was also to be an expression of the garden and park art and tomb architecture of the time.
After 1919, it was expanded towards Gumieniec (German: Sscheune) according to the design of Georg Hannig, the first director of the cemetery, who held this position in the years 1900-1928. By the end of World War II, the cemetery had an area of 139.5 ha, which placed it in third place in Europe after the Ohlsdorf Friedhof in Hamburg (387 ha) and the Viennese Zentral Friedhof (198 ha). Designers took care of the aesthetics of the cemetery, taking advantage of the natural landscape values, elevation differences, and watercourses. They designed a necropolis on park grounds, with a large amount of various, often exotic plants, hedges, interesting elements of small architecture, fountains, stone wells and other sculptural elements.
Today, the preserved monuments and tombstones in the Central Cemetery are the remains of the once richly represented sepulchral sculptures in the Szczecin necropolis. They were erected in accordance with the provisions of the former cemetery regulations, resulting from the principles of the reform of cemetery art at the beginning of the 20th century. These regulations specified both the size of the monuments and the material from which they were to be made (limestone, sandstone, artificial stone).
Despite their not very impressive form, all tombstones are characterized by a high artistic level. As products of the most famous German stone workshops, they are an interesting example of stone art typical of the era in which they were made.