Jewish cemeteries were usually located on slopes or otherwise unfavourable places that the Christian society had little interest in. At the time of its origin, the Turnov cemetery was located outside the town. Its elongated layout was acquired by double extension.

In its northern part there are the oldest tombstones covered with Hebrew inscriptions, gradually alternated with Hebrew-German tombstones, until finally Hebrew is represented on the tombstones only by the letters פּ'נ (the abbreviation of Hebrew "here lies") and תנצב"ה (the abbreviation of Hebrew "may his soul be bound in the bond of the everlasting life"). In the southern part of the graveyard, German on the tombstones is gradually replaced with Czech. In the cemetery there are buried ancestors of important personalities such as Pavel Tigrid and writer Ivan Olbracht.

In the 19th century, a graveyard house was constructed in the cemetery which houses a preserved stone table made of one piece of slate. It was used to ritually wash the bodies of the dead before their burial. In the cemetery there was a glass memorial plaque from 1952 with the names of the Jews from Turnov and the surrounding area who had not returned from concentration camps. The plaque was damaged by vandals in 1985. Its granite copy is currently in the interior of the cemetery house. There is also a small exhibition about the history of the Jewish cemetery.