Adventures with the other side

Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise I recently took my oldest granddaughter to Paris to celebrate her 13 th birthday.   Of course Père Lachaise cemetery was high on my list of places to visit, so one afternoon we boarded the metro and made our way to la cite des morts ( the City of the Dead). History This famous cemetery was named for Père François de La Chaise (1624 - 1709), who was confessor to King Louis XIV and who lived in the Jesuit house on the site of the chapel.   Napoleon established the area as a cemetery in 1804 after cemeteries in the city had become so overcrowded that new ones had to be built outside the city limits. Napoleon having just announced that “every citizen had a right to be buried, regardless of race or religion” decided to create several new cemeteries.   On 21 May 1804 the first person was buried at Père -Lachaise; a five-year-old girl named Adélaïde Paillard de Villeneuve, although her gravesite no longer exists as her plot was a temporary conce