The origins of the cemetery are connected with an ordinance of the Police Committee of Both Nations from 1792 ordering relocation of overcrowded church graveyards outside the city.  The new cemetery was located on the premises bought from the Birgittine Order on the western outskirts of Lublin. The area was planted with linden trees and many locals started to call the place “the cemetery under linden trees.” The name of the street – Lipowa (Linden) Street - stems from it too.

The necropolis is generally divided into Roman-Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical sectors. There is also a military graveyard with a columbarium, where an urn containing soil from the place of tragic death of the Lublin poet Józef Czechowicz is buried. Numerous distinguished people of merit to Lublin and Poland are buried in the Lipowa Cemetery i.e. Hieronim Łopaciński, Idzi Radziszewski, Karol Rudolf Vetter, Emil Plage and the Hess Family.

Many gravestones found in the cemetery are truly works of art. Beautifully sculpted and decorated with intricate reliefs and inscriptions, they represent the highest level of stone work craftsmanship. One of the examples is the 1888 tomb sculpture commemorating the Bobrowski Family from Snopków by the renowned artist Bolesław Syrewicz.