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[Wumpi]

Most of my fortresses have a standard catacombs layout for the general population. 3 tile wide tunnels smoothed and engraved with alcoves in the walls for coffins, and small offshoot rooms for notable citizens or minor nobles. Larger tombs for more important nobles, and usually the grandest are reserved for those special dwarves I take personal interest in.
In one of my favorite forts, my baroness was promoted based on 15 years of brutal combat efficiency, having racked up close to 200 kills on her own, and lead her various squads to far more glory. Her tomb was massive and decorated with armor and weapon racks, and statues of dying goblins. When she was entered, the colosseum was opened to the cavern layers, luring in the entire population of FBs to do glorious battle in memory of their warrior queen. Many dwarves died.

[90908]

Most of my fortresses have a standard catacombs layout for the general population. 3 tile wide tunnels smoothed and engraved with alcoves in the walls for coffins, and small offshoot rooms for notable citizens or minor nobles. Larger tombs for more important nobles, and usually the grandest are reserved for those special dwarves I take personal interest in.
In one of my favorite forts, my baroness was promoted based on 15 years of brutal combat efficiency, having racked up close to 200 kills on her own, and lead her various squads to far more glory. Her tomb was massive and decorated with armor and weapon racks, and statues of dying goblins. When she was entered, the colosseum was opened to the cavern layers, luring in the entire population of FBs to do glorious battle in memory of their warrior queen. Many dwarves died.

Can you remember specifics on how many died? Sorry to be irritating, but I'm rather curious now. It is horrifying.

[Blastbeard]

Nobody gets a tomb when I'm in charge. Corpses are incremental lag at best and zombies waiting to happen at worst, so cremation is mandatory. You get a magma bath and a slab, enjoy. Damn your needs, we have a dining hall that is just that good. Where your slab goes when you die depends on what you did in life. A soldier's slab goes in the barracks, a broker's slab goes near the trade depot, so on and so forth. wherever it ends up, it gets nestled into an alcove which is then sealed with a fortification to protect from harm while allowing safe viewing.

I'm a little less spartan when I play humans, so I try to make an above-ground graveyard like real life. Key word being try. When I can, I fence off an area with fortifications and channel rows of 1x1 holes in the ground. Coffin goes in hole, person goes in coffin, floor tile goes on top of hole. Rinse and repeat until I run out of room, in which case I build an access mausoleum, dig down, and entomb like you normally would. The aesthetics of it barely justify the time and amount of space it takes, and there's a lot of room for something to go wrong, so I don't recommend it as a staple feature for fortress play.

But the best part is that I play with modded necromancers who get [EXTRAVISION] in exchange for weaker zombies. This means they can raise the dead through walls as long as they can get close enough. Combine that with an above-ground, easy to reach corpse supply and you get some HILARIOUS scenarios.

[Shûl-nak]

The fort I remember honouring the dead best in was called 'Tombfar,' I think, so I ran with the morbid theme and went ham on my funereal services. I made a grand multi-z-level dining hall with alcoves in the upper layers for coffins and statues reserved for honouring the most brave or indispensible dwarves - knowing the stern gaze of their honoured ancestors was upon them, hopefully the party dwellers and idlers would be shamed into more productive service. It was eventually expanded to incorporate a dais for the nobles and king to sit at, behind which their predecessors' remains lounged in the finest receptacles available.

Meanwhile, the bodies of the less notable dwarves, and their pets, were interred in the sombre dormitories that they might slumber alongside their living compadres, arranged in family groups where appropriate. Any pet whose owner died was immediately killed and buried to serve their master in the afterlife.

Particularly troublesome dwarfs got their bodies dumped into the 'Chutes of Shame' which ended in the cavern layers, and eventually opened up above the clowns' neon pits in the circus.

A slab was then built of the cheapest rock available by someone unskilled in masonry (usually a drunk reveller) and taken to the Keeper.

Far from the rest of the fortress, the Keeper of the Forgotten Halls would stand watch by the chasm that separated the Forgotten Halls from the realms of the living. They were the only ones permitted to lower the bridge and enter to erect slabs to the disgraced, and to dump their cursed possessions there that none others in the fort might become tainted via association with belongings of the incompetent.

The business of death was grand in Tombfar, and its large migrant waves meant the overseers could be frivolous with dwarven lives. Gladiatorial fights, mass-enlistment for cavern patrols, and reckless mining operations were the norm to ensure there was always a healthy supply of dead dwarves for the practicing coffin-crafters. Just don't tell them if you're a doctor.

[GiglameshDespair]

I never did too much.

Each dwarf had a 3x3 room attached by a 2x1 corridor.
The room itself has the coffin. Once a dwarf is buried, it is walled off and a slab placed in the remaining tile space for viewing.

[mirrizin]

I tend to do a three wide hallway with alcoves on either side, two deep. Each alcove gets a coffin and a slab. I make a point of smoothing them over as they get occupied.

I'm thinking a bit more creatively this time, and thinking 1) of using tombs as ways to memorialize particular battles and 2) making more particular tombs for dwarves of some importance. I mean, if the dwarf picks a fight with a giant olm and loses, or dives off the bridge and drowns, that's a standard coffin/slab combo. But when a web-spewing two-tailed dimetrodon waltzes along and decapitates the baroness, then slaying half of the standing army, that sucker deserves a crypt of its own. So, after the mess was cleaned up, I dug out a little cavern with a standard 2-deep alcove for the poor miner who was accompanying the baroness (both were among of the original seven, actually, so a little sad that Thob didn't get anything more) and three by three tombs for the soldiers, each with its own weapon rack and armor stand. The militia commander, also decapitated, got a circular tomb about 8x8 with weapon rack, armor stand, and a statue when a mason finally got around to making one of him. I think I also did some engraving.

And of course I engraved a slab memorializing the FB and put that right by the entrance to the crypt.

As with everything in DF I try to resist the urge to get too standardized in my designs.

[90908]

The fort I remember honouring the dead best in was called 'Tombfar,' I think, so I ran with the morbid theme and went ham on my funereal services. I made a grand multi-z-level dining hall with alcoves in the upper layers for coffins and statues reserved for honouring the most brave or indispensible dwarves - knowing the stern gaze of their honoured ancestors was upon them, hopefully the party dwellers and idlers would be shamed into more productive service. It was eventually expanded to incorporate a dais for the nobles and king to sit at, behind which their predecessors' remains lounged in the finest receptacles available.

Meanwhile, the bodies of the less notable dwarves, and their pets, were interred in the sombre dormitories that they might slumber alongside their living compadres, arranged in family groups where appropriate. Any pet whose owner died was immediately killed and buried to serve their master in the afterlife.

Particularly troublesome dwarfs got their bodies dumped into the 'Chutes of Shame' which ended in the cavern layers, and eventually opened up above the clowns' neon pits in the circus.

A slab was then built of the cheapest rock available by someone unskilled in masonry (usually a drunk reveller) and taken to the Keeper.

Far from the rest of the fortress, the Keeper of the Forgotten Halls would stand watch by the chasm that separated the Forgotten Halls from the realms of the living. They were the only ones permitted to lower the bridge and enter to erect slabs to the disgraced, and to dump their cursed possessions there that none others in the fort might become tainted via association with belongings of the incompetent.

The business of death was grand in Tombfar, and its large migrant waves meant the overseers could be frivolous with dwarven lives. Gladiatorial fights, mass-enlistment for cavern patrols, and reckless mining operations were the norm to ensure there was always a healthy supply of dead dwarves for the practicing coffin-crafters. Just don't tell them if you're a doctor.

I rather like the Forgotten Halls concept. Even I, with my frankly unhealthy obsession with lavishing corpses with precious metals, did not have a part of my fortress dedicated to the dwarves that I wish I never had. Although, I did dump several raven corpses on a dwarf who hated them, which I considered to be quite creative at the tim.e

[FrisianDude]

Catacaombs. 2x2 along a seperate hallway, each dead dwarf (and pets and mercenaries) get a 2x2 room, usually smoothed or partially constructed (gemsgemsgems or ooores) with a coffin. Or sarcophagus if my masons are too slow to keep up with something like a recent 25-dorf-loss-FB-rampage. My baron has a tomb. Was a fine tomb but now it's a royal mausoleum because of artifact chest.

[azrael4h]

I usually just have a catacombs level in which dwarves and pets are interred in single-tile alcoves, and then walled in.  Statues are placed in the catacombs' walkways, in special alcoves. Slabs are placed in side alcoves in main walkways for those I can't recover.

Military dwarves get a statue in front of their wall, and if I can afford the effort, a slab in the main walkways as a memorial.

Nobles are dumped in the caverns as food for whatever wants to eat them, and a slab stuffed in the most remote parts of the mines. I may build a Hall of Shame for nobles though. Slabs along the sides, and a corpse pile for the bodies.

[martinuzz]

I guess this was my most impressive catacomb: http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-29883-foreverfrozentomb

My current fort houses family clans around a simple family tomb. Parents both get an overlapping tomb assigned, children are just buried there ad hoc if the need arises. Nothing fancy, just thematic:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[jontiben]

I build classical tombs into slopes on the other side of the mountain for my important dwarves. These usually involve a short passageway with statues of them in alcoves, and then a wide burial chamber with engraved walls and floors, their sarcophagus (and possibly that of one or two of their family members), and their biographies chiseled into slabs flanking their coffin. Off this is usually one or two small rooms with some items. Military heroes usually get their named artifact equipment, everyone else gets a few particularly high-quality gems. Once construction is complete, I seal of the entrance with blocks.

A few of my minor leaders that I've role-played as priests get coffins off their appropriate temple. Every other minor official gets a fairly sizeable tomb off a hallway carved into the same slope that my important people are interred in, often with a random statue.

Everyone else (including pets) are buried in stone sarcophagi in my catacombs; usually long rooms off a twisting labyrinth. It's inefficient, but great for role-play purposes.

However, if anyone died after showing cowardice (or doomed their compatriots to death through extreme stupidity) they're placed in a wooden coffin outside, and their corpses are left to slowly bleach and decompose under the sun, ensuring that their spirits find their way to dwarven hell.