Famous Paris Cemeteries

The Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Cimetière du Montmartre, and Cimetière de Montparnasse in Paris

 

Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

Père Lachaise cemetery covers 108 rolling acres of woodlands and tombstones in Paris' 20eme.

Paris's greatest cemetery is more like rolling, wooded parkland in which there just happen to be thousands of stone monuments—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); Ingres, Modigliani; Isadora Duncan, Colette, Sarah Berhardt, and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (who are, sweetly, buried back-to-back and share a headstone upon which fresh red rose-is-a-roses are laid daily).

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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 Metro system—on the surrounding monuments and erected a barrier fence and guards to keep accolytes 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.
www.pere-lachaise.com
Open daily

Cimetière de Montmartre

Degas, Offenbach, Truffaut, Dumas, Heinrich Heine, and Berlioz.
Open daily

Cimetière de Montparnasse

Literary fans take note: here lie Sartre, Baudelaire, Maupassant, and Simone de Beauvoir alongside the likes of composer Saint-Saëns and Andre Citroën (the car guy).
Open daily

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