Père-Lachaise: The City of the Dead
Why is it significant?
Walk through the gate and the noise of the boulevard drops away behind you. Ahead, cobbled lanes climb between rows of chapels, obelisks, weeping angels and crooked old tombstones, all under a ceiling of chestnut trees and maples.
Key Facts
| Place | Père-Lachaise: The City of the Dead |
|---|---|
| Address | Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Place Auguste-Métivier, 75020 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.86340, 2.38840 |
| Part of Walk | Rebel Hill: Buttes-Chaumont, Belleville & the Secrets of Père-Lachaise in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk through the gate and the noise of the boulevard drops away behind you. Ahead, cobbled lanes climb between rows of chapels, obelisks, weeping angels and crooked old tombstones, all under a ceiling of chestnut trees and maples. It feels less like a cemetery than a small town, with its own avenues and street signs... and in a way, that is what it is.
Père-Lachaise opened in 1804, the year Napoleon made himself emperor. The old churchyards in the heart of Paris were overflowing, so new cemeteries were laid out outside the city, and this hillside was chosen for the east. It took its name from Father François de La Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV, who had lived in a Jesuit house on this very hill.
There was just one problem. Nobody wanted to be buried here. It was too far from the city, out in the countryside, on the side of a working-class hill, and in its first year only a handful of funerals took place. So the authorities tried a publicity stunt. In 1817 they moved here, with great ceremony, the supposed remains of the playwright Molière and the poet La Fontaine, and the medieval lovers Héloïse and Abélard. Whether the bones were really theirs is still debated. But it worked. Suddenly everyone who was anyone wanted a plot next to famous neighbours.
Today the cemetery covers more than forty hectares, with around seventy thousand burial plots, and it is the largest green space inside the city of Paris. Millions of visitors come every year, making it probably the most visited cemetery in the world. Writers, painters, singers, generals and revolutionaries lie here side by side, often in the same narrow lane.
Walk gently, keep your voice low, and remember that people still come here to bury and mourn their families. Now take the paths heading south-east, deeper into the old part of the cemetery, to a white marble tomb that is never without fresh flowers.