Forest Lawn Memorial Park — Michael Jackson mausoleum

Michael Jackson was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale on September 3, 2009, more than two months after his death on June 25 at his rented Holmby Hills mansion. He died at age 50 from acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication, administered by his personal physician Conrad Murray, who was subsequently convicted of involuntary manslaughter. His body was held for weeks as his family negotiated the arrangements and as the public memorial at the Staples Center — attended by over 17,000 people with a global television audience of hundreds of millions — was planned and executed. He was eventually placed in the Great Mausoleum in the Holly Terrace section, in a private locked area not open to general visitors.

Forest Lawn Glendale is one of California's most significant burial grounds, the final resting place of Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow, and dozens of other entertainment figures. It was conceived by its founder Hubert Eaton in the early twentieth century as a memorial park rather than a traditional cemetery — rolling lawns, reproductions of great works of art, no visible headstones at ground level — and its aesthetic of beauty and denial has shaped American memorial culture profoundly. Jackson's choice of Forest Lawn, made by his family and estate, placed him in this tradition of Hollywood celebrity burial.

The Great Mausoleum's Holly Terrace section where Jackson is interred requires a special access arrangement and is not part of the standard visitor experience at Forest Lawn. The cemetery is open daily to the public, however, and draws a steady stream of visitors paying respects to Jackson and the many other cultural figures buried there. The cemetery's vast grounds, its reproductions of Michelangelo's David and the Last Supper mosaic, and its extraordinary concentration of famous dead make it one of the strangest and most distinctively American places in Los Angeles.