article

The cimetière du Père-Lachaise ) is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris (there are larger cemeteries in Paris suburbs). The official name of the cemetery is the cimetière de l'Est (“eastern cemetery”).

Description

The cemetery is one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. Located in the 20e arrondissement, Père-Lachaise 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.

Origins

The name of the cemetery comes from 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. 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. (This same health hazard also led to the creation of the famous Parisian catacombs in the south of the city). Several new cemeteries replaced all the Parisian ones, outside the precincts of the capital, 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, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is Cimetière de Passy.

At the time of opening the cemetery was seen as too far from the city and attracted very few funerals. So the administrators devised a marketing strategy and with great fanfare organised 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 (by tradition, lovers or lovelorn singles leave letters at the crypt in tribute to the couple or in the hopes of finding true love). This strategy had the desired effect when people began clamouring to be buried with the famous citizens. Records show that within a few years, Père-Lachaise went from a few dozen permanent residents to more than 33,000. Today there are over 300,000 bodies buried in the cemetery, and many more in the columbarium which holds the remains of those who had requested cremation.

The Communards' Wall (French Mur des Fédérés) is also located in the cemetery. This is the wall against which 147 Communards, the last defenders of the workers district Belleville were shot on Sunday,May 28, 1871 -the last day of the "Bloody Week" (Sémaine Sanglante) ending the Paris Commune.

Famous people buried at Père Lachaise

A partial list of famous people buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery:

Notes of interest:

  • Maria Callas - The opera singers ashes were originally buried in the cemetery. After being stolen and later recovered, they were scattered into the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece. The empty urn remained in the Père Lachaise.
  • Frédéric Chopin - The composer's heart is entombed in a pillar in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.
  • Jacques-Louis David - Napoleon's court painter was exiled as a revolutionary after the Bourbons returned to the throne of France. His body was not allowed into the country even in death, so the tomb contains only his heart.
  • Allan Kardec - Born Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail, he was the founder of Spiritism. His grave is often "protected" by followers who try to keep tourists from photographing it.
  • 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 hire a full-time security guard for the grave. Many other parts of the cemetery have been defaced with arrows purporting to indicate the direction toward Morrison, though even these defacements have in many cases been defaced themselves, resulting in arrows that point in two directions.
  • Gioacchino Rossini - In 1887, the Italian composer's remains were moved back to Florence, but the crypt that once housed them (now dedicated to his memory) is still in Perè-Lachasise.
  • Alice B. Toklas - American author, and partner of Gertrude Stein, Toklas' name & information is etched on the other side of Stein's gravestone in the same sparse style and font. As they were inseparable in life, so too are they in death.
  • Marie, Countess Walewski - Napoleon's mistress, her heart only was entombed here; her other remains were returned to her native Poland.
  • Oscar Wilde - Irish novelist, poet & playwright. (In)Famous for "flamboyant" lifestyle in Victorian England. By tradition, Wilde's admirers kiss the monument while wearing lipstick.

A

B

C

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Père Lachaise".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world