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Père-Lachaise Cemetery
The famous Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris
Père Lachaise cemetery covers 108 rolling acres of woodlands and tombstones in Paris' 20eme.
Paris's greatest cemetery is more like rolling, wooded, 109-acre park in which there just happen to be thousands of stone monuments—oh, and dead people.
A litany of cultural giants, both French and Francophone, rest in peace here. The short list includes Chopin, Bizet, and Edith Piaf; Proust, Molière, Balzac, and Oscar Wilde (he's got a great Art Deco tombstone—sadly, now cordoned off behind an ugly fence thanks to a tradition that arose some time after the mid-1990s of visitors leaving ruby-red lipstick kisses all over it; authorities claimed the lipids in the lipstick were doing more damage than even regular graffiti).
Also resting in peace at Père-Lachaise: Ingres, Modigliani, Isadora Duncan, Colette, and Sarah Berhardt.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are, sweetly, buried back-to-back and share a single headstone upon which fresh red rose-is-a-roses are laid daily.
The most famous grave (not person; grave) is that of Jim Morrison, bearing an unbecoming bust of the Doors late great poet-songwriter. Note that, in recent years, the spoilsports of the cemetery have scoured off all the graffiti—which, at its height in the 1990s, seemed to be enough scrawl to cover all the cars in the entire Métro system—on the surrounding monuments and erected a barrier fence and guards to keep acolytes from littering the grave with offerings (flowers, cigarettes, booze, and a few stamps and sugar cubes for the hard partying) from an international roster neo-hippie pilgrims.
With so many illustrious corpses and magnificent tombs, you'd be wise to grab a map from the gatehouse.
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise
16, rue du Repos, 20eme
tel. +33-(0)1-71-28-50-82 or +33-(0)1-55-25-82-10
www.pere-lachaise.com (unofficial, but darned useful)
Métro: Père Lachaise; Bus: 60, 69, 102
Open Mon–Fri 8am–6pm, Sat 8:30am–6pm, Sun 9am–6pm (closes at 5:30pm in winter)
Tips
- Planning your time: I'd budget about an hour to 90 minutes here; some spend 2 hours or more. (
on Paris Itineraries.)
- Take a tour of Père Lachaise cemetery with our partners at Viator.com:
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This article was last updated in June 2011. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998–2010 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.
