The Southern Cemetery in the New Zealand city of Dunedin was the first major cemetery to be opened in the city. The cemetery was opened in 1858, ten years after the founding of the city in an area known as Little Paisley.^[1] This area lies at the southern end of Princes Street, one of the city's main streets, close to the suburbs of Kensington, Maryhill, and The Glen (part of Caversham).

The cemetery covers an area of some 5.7 hectares (14 acres), and is one of the most important nineteenth-century cemeteries in New Zealand. It is sited on a steeply sloping site on a spur at the southern end of the central city, overlooking "The Flat", the area of coastal plain on which the suburbs of South Dunedin and Saint Kilda are located. It is divided into separate sections set aside for Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Roman catholics, as well as a Jewish section. The cemetery was opened in early 1858, with the earliest recorded interment being that of John MacGibbon in March 1858.^[2]

In all, some 23,000 burials were recorded at the Southern Cemetery. Much of the cemetery is in a poor state of maintenance, though there are plans to repair some of its more damaged areas. There are 21 graves of service personnel registered and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 20 from World War I and one from World War II.^[3] The cemetery is listed on the New Zealand Historic Places Trust Register as a Historic Place – Category I.^[4]

The cemetery includes, at its city end, a historic mortuary building, which was used from 1903 to 1949.^[2]

The Northern Cemetery, at the other end of the city's main urban area, was opened in 1872. Neither of these cemeteries are still used for new burials (the last burials at the Southern Cemetery were in 1985); as of 2009^[update] Dunedin's main cemetery is at Andersons Bay in the south of the city.

• Thomas Burns
• Captain William Cargill
• Henry Clapcott (1830–1897), treasurer of the Otago Provincial Council (1864–65)^[9]
• Willi Fels
• Hugh Gourley (1825–1906)
• Bendix Hallenstein
• Maurice Joel
• Johnny Jones
• Leopold Kirschner
• William Downie Stewart
• Dorothy Theomin
• Prince Konstanty Alojzy Drucki-Lubecki^[10][11]