Cimitière Père Lachaise

---

Is it possible (or even desirable) to spend a whole day in a cemetery? Indeed it is...especially when that cemetery is Cimitière Père Lachaise! This is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris – 44 hectares – and (according to Wikipedia) is supposed to be the world’s most visited.

Père Lachaise sits on a tree-covered hill and is criss-crossed by a combination of wide, cobbled avenues and smaller, more intimate footpaths, making it a very pleasant place to wander around (especially on a hot day). After a couple of hours ‘grave-spotting’, we secreted ourselves in a quiet spot and had a picnic lunch among the graves.

There are so many famous people buried here and despite spending the whole day, we didn't get to see all of the graves we had hoped to. Let's just name a few of the ones we did see, shall we? Edith Piaf, Modigliani, Jim Morrison, Marcel Marceau, Héloïse and Abélard, Chopin, Balzac, Colette, Maria Callas, Molière, La Fontaine, Proust...the list goes on. It was really interesting to see how some of the graves are quite grandiose and others very plain. It was also fascinating to see the tributes people leave on the graves. For example, people have placed small stones all around the edge of Gertrude Stein's very plain grave. On many others, visitors have left little notes of tribute. Oscar Wilde's is so popular, it has had to be screened with perspex and (recently) fenced off! For some reason, people have felt compelled to plant a kiss on his grave and write messages.

We went to look at the memorial to the Fédérés of the Paris Commune, where 147 men and women were lined up against the cemetery wall and shot. In the same area there are numerous other memorials devoted to the victims of war and other disasters (e.g. airline crashes). It’s a very sombre part of the cemetery.

On the way out, we stopped in at the humungous columbarium. After the disturbing memorials it seemed quite cheery to visit Stéphane Grappelli, who lived a long life and brought us so much pleasure.

It was actually quite a long day for such a short blog!

---

Photos

Weeping Angels?
Doctor Who fans might appreciate this one!
(For some reason, TravelBlog keeps squashing portrait format photos - hopefully this one is fixed now).

Jim Morrison's grave
Another site that is so "loved" it has had to be fenced.

Théodore Géricault's grave
His famous painting, The Raft of the Medusa, is reproduced on the tombstone.

Modigliani’s grave
Lots of tributes on this one - many of which are Metro tickets; we're not sure why.

Cool dude!
Actually, his name was Andre Gill and he was a famous caricature artist.

Memorial to the victims of Auschwitz
One of the many memorials to those who were exterminated by the Nazis in concentration camps.

Comments

[Melanie]

Modigliani's grave
I love how the tribute's on Modigliani's grave even look arty - pared down, not too gaudy, etc. Here's a theory on the Metro tickets that I found somewhere that might be a link to the extreme poverty that Modigliani experienced in life: "..... Satre had, at one time, supported the Maoists movement in Paris when they protested a big hike in the price of Metro tickets. There was a popular protest, acted out by buying metro tickets and giving them to the less fortunate who could not afford to buy them themselves."

[Yannisee]

Those Metro tickets
Thanks heaps Melanie. We haven't seen Jean-Paul Satre's grave yet - it's in Montparnasse Cemetary but we hope to visit it next time! I've now had a bit of a look around too and found a photo of Modigliani's grave (on Wikipedia) that shows plenty of tributes, but none are Metro tickets. Perhaps these things go through phases?