A Walk Through Père Lachaise...Cemetery

Unknown Person - is it the old man reflecting on the life of the young man?

That's right - a tour of a cemetery!  Père Lachaise is one of the most visited sites in Paris - in fact it is reputed to be the most visited Cemetery in the world!  It is the resting place of the "who's who" of French society - as well as many well-known expatriates from the rest of the world who made Paris their home - or who just happened to be in the City of Light when they "met their end."  There are moving sculptural tributes to those who perished in the Holocaust and forced labor camps.

Père Lachaise is also part of the history of the Paris.  The Commune of 1871 culminated here with the execution of  175 "Communards." The wall where they were executed became a symbol of the French Left.  This was the first uprising by the working classes since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  The executions did not end the repression - many executions, prison sentences, and deportations to New Caledonia, the French penal colony in the South Pacific, continued after the fall of the Commune.

During one of our stays in Paris in the 1990's, I read the book  Paris Babylon - The Story of the Paris Commune while sitting on benches near the sites talked about in the book!  The wall in Père Lachaise is very real to me; the book gave me a better understanding about the deprivations during and after the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War and the conditions of the working classes in this neighborhood.

But the cemetery is more than history, the home of 300 cats, or the last resting place of the famous and infamous.  It is a beautiful setting - a park-like expanse with trees and hillside paths that wind between the beautiful and quirky funerary art!  Headstones are more than a plaque on the ground.  There are elaborate sculptures, family chapels, and even a touch of humor!  A recent tomb of an artist has a plaque that says - in French  - Alone at Last!

I have been taking people on tours of Pere Lachaise for many years - the first tours were for Marie-Elisabeth's students from her summer program at the Sorbonne.  Later I did tours for both of my mom's "Tina's Travelers" trips to Paris. Since then, I've taken friends and family on a walk through time and history in this interesting site of French/Parisian history.  I found a way to give people an oversight of this massive cemetery without stumbling around for hours to find the sites they would find most interesting.  I concentrated on people Americans would know along with lesser known "Permanent Parisians" with interesting stories or unusual funerary tributes. There are so many stories in Pere Lachaise - one could study the cemetery for years.  

Frederic Chopin - The Tomb says "Fred Chopin"

The founding of the cemetery is a good story in itself.  People were traditionally buried in church yards in Paris.  Unaware of the sanitary issues, more and more burials took place to the point the bones were protruding from church cemeteries.  The final incident that caused a furor was when caskets broke through into the basement of a building adjoining a church burial ground.  Napoleon ordered that new sites were to be found and no more burials were to take place in Paris church yards.

Pere Lachaise - originally known as the "Cemetery of the East"  - was owned by the Jesuits.  The confessor of Louis XIV - Pere Lachaise - lived on the site.  The property eventually fell into private hands.  A clever city planner, Nicolas Frochot,  purchased the property from the Baron Desfontaines for a bargain basement price - 18 years later Frochot sold the Barron a plot for his own burial that was 282 times the price he had been paid for the entire property!

Frochot also came up with a novel way of attracting people to use the Cemetery - which was at that time out in the country and far from Paris.  He moved famous people to Père Lachaise!  Moliere, La Fontaine, Heloise and Abelard were moved.  The trend continued so that Père Lachaise is THE place to be buried in the French capital.

Jim Morrison - The bust has been stolen, graffiti has to be constantly cleaned, the site is fenced, and is often guarded!  Is he really here?  Mr. Mojo Risin!   

I could go on for pages on the stories of some of the tombs - but I will end with a partial list of those buried here:

• Moliere
• Chopin
• Bizet
• Balzac
• Yves Montand 
• Edit Piaf
• Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
• Jim Morrison (The Doors)
• Sarah Bernhardt
• Isadora Duncan
• Rossini
• Pissarro
• Poulenc
• Oscar Wilde
• Proust

Oscar Wilde - a plastic barrier had to be erected around the base!  A tradition of kissing the tomb with lipstick was causing the stone to deteriorate - it could not be cleaned!!! 

Pere Lachaise - worth the visit!