Statue Park lies in Yaleth's north eastern corner, nestled just beneath Royal Hill. It is surrounded by a very high wall on three sides and runs into Yaleth's city wall on the east; a single gate opens onto Westers Lane which is locked at night but open to all during day time. The park owes its existence to the Morunun commandment forbidden anything other than a simple name plaque being displayed at the place where a cremated person's ashes are scattered. Hence the Morunun cemetery itself simply holds thousands of such plaques over the last resting place. But for reasons of vanity, politics or (just occasionally) genuine bereavement, wealthy families often feel the need for a more impressive memorial to their departed kin. Families especially powerful might get a statue erected in a public place; more commonly, aristocrats build memorials on their country estates. Yet for many, notably mercantile families, neither are an option and so places like Statue Park are opened. The park, originally government property, has been used for these purposes for many centuries and was originally known as the Garden of Tears. In 1081 the federal government made a rather crass attempt to appropriate the park as a place to put statues of Christotan heroes - or more accurately, Christotan rulers. An outcry followed; more importantly, so did intervention by the Temple of Morunun. Exactly what the Morunun officials did has never been properly established and has been the topic of fanciful rumours, but their mysterious pressure worked. The statues were scattered around the Cities' many plazas and the Temple ended up buying the gardens themselves. For some reason, though, the putative name for the statue gardens became generally applied to the Garden of Tears. Under the Temple of Morunun, both the erection and maintenance of memorials are entirely at a family's expense. Some have crumbled over time, especially in cases where the families have dropped out of prosperity; occasionally the Temple quietly demolishes the most decrepit. Despite this, and expansion in 1205, space is running out at Statue Park, exacerbated by the Temple's insistence on suitably reverential distance between each structure. Similar gardens have sprung up elsewhere in and around the Cities but Statue Park, with its 'old money' connotations, is still the most prized. The are numerous rumours, all unproved to date, of Morunun officials being bribed or extorted to allow a fresh memorial to be squeezed in.
Statue Park is always well-maintained, with lawns and lines of ash trees marking the distance between the memorials. The high walls help to insulate it from the rest of the Cities though it doesn't have the supernatural hush of the Morunun cemetery. As to the memorials themselves, columns and obelisks have been the most popular choice. Obelisks are frequently decorated with carved pictures glorifying the lives of the departed. If they were Garrans then the obelisk is also often flanked by images of selected deities and heroes, either carved onto the stone or as statues standing guard on either side. The most notable is that of Ventor Goldran, a 10th century worthy, which stands 65 feet high in the very centre of the gardens. Its pictures, which are rather worn, dramatise the progress of his life as they climb the structure until a statue set at the very top shows him ascending to heaven in a chariot. Columns also sometimes feature pictures, generally winding up in spiral lines, though can also be bare. Either type usually stands on a base which bears the deceased's name. Columns can also form the base for a statue, though statues standing alone can form their own memorial. Usually the statues depict the departed in a stylised posture, possibly surrounded by spouse or children. Garrans also sometimes choose a character from their mythology whose qualities they feel best epitomises the departed (St Maskham for fortitude, for wisdom and for strength being the most popular). Of other memorials, arches have often been used to commemorate the passing of an entire generation. Tomas Listel has recently built one with statues of his mother and father standing on plinths at either side and the names of the rest of the generation inscribed across the top.