Cimetière du Père Lachaisethe largest cemetery in Paris |
The Cimetière du Père Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris, and one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. Located in the 20th arrondissement, Pere-Lachaise Cemetery is reputed to be the most visited cemetery in the world, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to the graves of the those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is also the location of five Great War memorials.
The name has its origins in Père François de la Chaise (1624 - 1709). He was the confessor of Louis XIV, and lived in the Jesuit house rebuilt in 1682 on the site of the chapel. The property, situated on the side of a hill from which the king, during the Fronde, watched skirmishing between the Condé and Turenne, was bought by the city in 1804 and laid out by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, and later extended.
The
cemetery was established by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804, whereas
cemeteries had been banned inside Paris in 1786 after the shutting down
of the Cimetière des Innocents, on the fringe of Les Halles food
market, on the grounds that it presented a health hazard. Several new
cemeteries replaced all the Parisian ones, outside the precincts of the
capital, in the early 19th century, Cimetière de Montmartre in
the north, Le Père Lachaise in the east and Cimetière du
Montparnasse in the south. At the heart of the city, and today, sitting
in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is Cimetière de Passy.
At the time the cemetery opened, it was seen as too far from the city and attracted very few interments. As such, the administrators devised a marketing strategy and with great fanfare, organized the transfer of the remains of La Fontaine and Molière, in 1804. Then, in another great spectacle in 1817, the purported remains of Pierre Abélard and Héloïse were also transferred to the cemetery with their monument's canopy made from fragments of the abbey of Nogent-sur-Seine. All this marketing strategy resulted in a great many people clamoring to be buried with such famous citizens. Records show that within a few years, the cemetery went from a few dozen permanent residents to more than 33,000. Nowadays there are over 300,000 bodies buried in the cemetery, and many more in the Columbarium and ones that have been cremated.
In the grounds there is also the Communards' Wall (French Mur des Fédérés) against which 147 communards, the leaders of the Paris Commune were shot on May 28, 1871 after the fall of the commune.
Many famous people are buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.
A
major attraction for foreign tourists is the grave of Jim Morrison. Permanent
crowds and occasional vandalism surrounding this tomb have caused tensions
with the families of other, less famous, deceased. The cemetery has been
forced to have a security guard watch over it full time.
Some of them are:
Guillaume Apollinaire, Poet
Hubertine Auclert (1848-1914), French feminist
Jean-Pierre Aumont, actor
Jane Avril, Can-can dancer
Honoré de Balzac, writer
Henri Barbusse, writer
Paul Barras, statesman during the French Revolution
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, musician & more
Gilbert Bécaud, singer
Vincenzo Bellini, composer of operas
Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate cabinet member
Claude Bernard (1813-1878), physiologist
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1803-1814), essayist
Sarah Bernhardt, actress
Georges Bizet, composer
Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), political activist
Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813), architect
Joseph Caillaux, (1863-1944), statesman
Gustave Caillebotte, painter
Maria Callas, Opera singer
Jean-Joseph Carriès, sculptor
Pierre Cartellier, sculptor
Jean-François Champollion, Egyptologist
Frédéric Chopin, composer (although his heart is entombed
in a pillar in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, Poland)
Émile Cohl (1857-1938), caricaturist
Colette, Writer
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, painter
The grave of Frédéric ChopinThomas Couture, painter, teacher
Edouard Daladier, statesman
Alexandre Darracq (1855-1931), automobile manufacturer
Jacques Louis David, painter
Jean-Gaspard Deburau, mime
Eugène Delacroix, painter
Gustave Doré, graphic artist, lithographer
Michel Drach, film director, producer, screenwriter
Marie Dubas, singer
Paul Dukas, composer
Isadora Duncan, American-born dancer
Paul Eluard, poet
George Enescu, Romanian composer, violonist, pianist, conductor
Max Ernst, Surrealist and Expressionist artist
Alexandre Falguière (1831-1900), sculptor, painter
Jean de la Fontaine, poet and writer of fables
Loie Fuller, pioneer of modern dance
Antonio de La Gandara, painter
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, physicist
Théodore Géricault, painter
Stephane Grappelli, Jazz violinist
Yvette Guilbert, music-hall singer
Samuel Hahnemann, creator of homeopathy
Jeanne Hébuterne (1898-1920), painter
The grave of Jim Morrison
Sadegh Hedayat, Iranian novelist
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, painter
Jean-Baptiste Isabey, painter
Léon Jouhaux trade unionist, Nobel Peace prize winner
Allan Kardec
Rodolphe Kreutzer, violinist
René Lalique, artist in glass
Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wely, organist and composer
Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998), philosopher and theorist
Étienne Macdonald, Marshal of France
Nestor Makhno, Ukrainian anarchist, revolutionary
Angelo Mariani, French chemist, Vin Mariani inventor .
Constance Mayer-Lamartinière, painter
Judah Benjamin, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State of the Confederate
States of America
Georges Méliès (1861-1938), pioneer filmmaker
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), philosopher
The grave of Édith PiafCléo de Mérode (1874-1965),
dancer
Jules Michelet (1798-1874), historian
Amedeo Modigliani, painter and sculptor
Molière, Dramatist
Gaspard Monge (1746-1818), mathematician
Yves Montand, actor
Jim Morrison, American singer, songwriter, and poet
Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), writer
Félix Nadar (1820-1910), photographer
Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855), poet and translator
Anne de Noailles, writer
Charles Nodier, writer
Jean Nohain (1900-1981), lyricist
Victor Noir, journalist
Pascale Ogier (1958-1984), French actress
Max Ophüls (1902-1957), film director
Adelina Patti (1843-1919), opera singer
Michel Petrucciani (1962-1999), jazz pianist
Édith Piaf, France's most famous singer
Christian Pineau, Resistance worker, statesman
Camille Pissarro, "Father of Impressionism"
Ignace Pleyel (1757-1831), composer
Elvire Popesco (1894-1993), Romanian born actress
Oscar WildeFrancis Poulenc, composer, member of "Les Six"
Marcel Proust, writer
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, painter
Mlle Rachel,actress at Comédie-Française
Norbert Rillieux, inventor
Georges Rodenbach, Symbolist poet and novelist
Gioacchino Rossini, Italian composer
Raymond Roussel, writer
Claude de Saint-Simon, (1760-1825) economist
Georges Seurat, artist
Simone Signoret, actress
Sir Sidney Smith, English admiral
Alexandre Stavinsky, notorious embezzler
Gertrude Stein, American writer
Alice B. Toklas, American writer
Maurice Tourneur, film director
Marie Trintignant, actress
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, Dominican dictator
Jules Vallés (1832-1885), writer
Charles Henry VerHuell, Dutch Admiral
Marie Walewska (1789-1817), Napoleon's mistress (her heart only; her other
remains were returned to her native Poland)
Alexandre Walewski (1810-1868), statesman, Napoleon's son
Richard Wallace (1818 - 1890), British art collector
Oscar Wilde, Irish writer
Richard Wright, American writer
Achille Zavatta, circus operator and famous clown
Félix Ziem (1821-1911), painter
Pierre Abelard (1079-1142),French scholastic philosopher
Heloise (1101-1162) , abbess of the Oratory of the Paraclete
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974), Guatemalan writer, winner of
the 1967 Nobel prize in literature