People always picture Paris as the City of Lights and Romance, Love and unforgettable moments to share forever. It’s definitely a real heaven; the dream of thousands of people throughout the world. With countless cultural places to dive in and incredible attractions to enjoy, fashionable shopping centers where the numerous brands make people go crazy and high class restaurants blessed with yummy and delicious cuisines, it’s a place, which a certain number of tourists visit for one reason: Pere-Lachaise Cemetery.
Parisians call the cemetery “la cite des morts,” the city of the dead. With its rolling hills, thousands of trees, winding paths with carefully plotted “street” names and elaborate sepulchers and tombs, it’s easy to see why Pere-Lachaise is considered one of the most hauntingly beautiful places of rest. Of the twenty cemeteries in Paris Pere-Lachaise is the most famous. It now has over 70,000 plots and receives some two million visitors a year.
Once a poor district of Paris with many outlaws, winding streets and shady avenues it’s today one of the most visited places in Paris. You will hardly find a cemetery in the world that is as much visited as Pere-Lachaise. It’s situated on the hill of Champ Eveque where a wealthy merchant built his home in 1430. Pere Lachaise takes its name from Francois d’Aix de La Chaise who was a French Jesuit with a big influence and confessor of Louis XIV after 1675. In 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte established Pere Lachaise in order to make a cemetery far from the hustle and bustle of the city.
The cemetery has several entrances and covers about 44 ha. One of the entrances is from the underground stop named Pere Lachaise, so you can easily get there if you go by train. You can visit the cemetery in every season but try to catch a bright and sunny day to stay there longer and to explore everything you want. You can walk leisurely down the straight avenues, deviate down the less frequented serpentine paths or take the adventurous road less traveled and venture in and out between sepulchers and tombstones.
You will see more than 300,000 people who are buried at “the grandest address in Paris,” including many famous artists and writers such as:
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) – French novelist and playwright
Frederic Chopin (1810-49) – Polish Romantic composer
Colette (1873-1954) – French novelist and provocateur (legend has it that cats replenish the roses on her grave)
Delacroix (1798-1863) – French Romantic artist
Molière (1622-73) – French playwright (remains transferred in 1817)
Jim Morrison (1943-71) – American musician and poet (one of the most popular graves in Pere-Lachaise)
Alfred de Musset (1810-57) – French poet, novelist, dramatist
Edith Piaf (1915-63) – French popular singer
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) – Irish playwright and writer (remains transferred in 1909; traditional to kiss his tomb while wearing lipstick).
