In the Israeli town of Safed lies a historical cemetery containing the graves of Jewish holy men among the 40,000 burials. Safed became the center of Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism, several hundred years ago. The cemetery is undergoing some work: an effort to GPS-map the Hebrew epitaphs of Kaballah leaders from the 15th-17th centuries.
With no money available to renovate it, the cemetery has been neglected for years. No one knew the number of the graves, and the records went missing decades ago. In the early 1990s the Safed municipality decided to renovate it by cleaning old graves and roads, building a staircase, and painting selected gravestones blue. When the excavations began, they were in for a shock: Under the paths leading to the famous graves were thousands of other graves, buried under the dirt because of the rains and the sediment flowing down the mountainside.
The renovation efforts expose a conundrum. Some believe the buried tombstones must be unearthed and documented for posterity. Since the inscribed markers are mostly limestone, that act in itself exposes them to weathering and destruction. The paint used in the 1990s identifies some graves, but also may have damaged them. Therefore, others believe this sacred burial site should be left as is so the dead can rest in peace. Read about Safed cemetery at Atlas Obscura.
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Source: neatorama