Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise

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 concession. The cemetery had a slow start with only 13 people being buried there in the first year, due to these low numbers French officials decided to move some famous people’s graves to the new cemetery in the hope of luring more citizens to bury their own loved ones there.  The remains of Abelard and Heloise were moved to the cemetery and entombed together so that the famous lovers could spend eternity together. Molière and La Fontaine were also moved to this site and in turn, the city saw an increase in the number of people wanting to be buried at the new cemetery.  Today there are an estimated million people buried here and two million cremated remains. While people can still be buried at Père Lachaise today, there is a long waiting list. In order to be buried at Père Lachaise you must meet some stipulations that include being born or dying in Paris and/or have an existing family plot. You can chose perpetuity, or a 10, 30, or 50-year lease, if the plot falls into disrepair or the lease ends the remains are moved into the ossuary.

The first crematorium in France was built at Père Lachaise, it was built in 1889 and was rather controversial at the time. Protestants allowed cremation as early as 1888 but the Catholic Church did not support this until 1966. Today there is an outdoor columbarium that surrounds the crematorium with several underground levels. In 1986 the Jardin du Souvenir ( Memory Garden ) was established on the East side of the cemetery where cremated remains can be scattered.

Famous Residents

Today there are multiple famous residents at the cemetery making this one of the most famous and “haunted” cemeteries in the world.  Among the famous people buried here are Frédéric Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, and of course Jim Morrison. The number of famous people’s graves who are visited here is so large that there is now a map located at the entrances directing visitors to each gravesite.

When preparing for our trip to Paris and Père-Lachaise one of the biggest complaints I heard from others was they did not plan enough time at the cemetery, so I planned a whole morning, I wanted time to see the famous tombs and then to just enjoy strolling around the pathways.

We started our visit making our way to see Jim Morrison’s tomb, we found our way and were a little surprised to see that it has now had a fence placed around it, the two times in the past that my husband has visited the grave site he was able to get right up next to the grave. The grave is relatively simple, Jim was buried on this site in an unmarked grave in 1971 after a private, short ceremony, the cemetery originally placed a simple marker at his grave but it was stolen, later a bust of the late rock star was added but it was also stolen. Some web sites now talk about a security guard watching over the site and of lines of people waiting to pay their respects; we encountered neither, there were a few other visitors but not many and no security guard. the site is still covered with tokens from fans,  many fans have now taken to placing chewed gum on a tree near his grave. His family pays to have the graffiti removed often as fans continue to mark his tomb even with a fence.

Richard visiting Jim Morrison Grave many years ago

We left Jim Morrison’s grave and were making our way to visit Chopin but as we got within a few feet of it a cemetery guard came out of nowhere yelling in French for everyone to “ get out”, we were all hoarded towards the gates and told we must leave because it might rain and the cemetery was closing. The best explanation we could get was “ It might rain and when it rains people die”. After some investigation it turns out that they do close the cemetery when they are expecting large amounts of rain ( it did rain quit heavily a short time later) because the cobblestones paths in the cemetery become very slippery and they had an actual death in the past.

Jim Morrison Grave today

Sienna and I ( and Robert the doll) at Jim Morrison gravesite

Sadly we did not get to visit the other graves we had hoped to, but we did have time to see some interesting ones as we made our way in and out.

Ghosts
Many ghost stories and sightings can be found about this cemetery among them stories that Marcel Proust and Maurice Ravel a loving couple in life who are said to now rise from their graves at night and go in search of each other. Adolphe Thiers who was the prime minister to King Louis-Phillippe has been said to tug on visitors clothing. Others have claimed to have seen both Jim Morrison and Chopin at their gravesites, a few years ago a photo of a ghostly figure looking like Jim was taken and published.

Whether you are ghost hunting or just looking for a quiet, lovely place to stroll around, Père Lachaise is a peaceful and incredibly beautiful place to spend the afternoon, should I ever return to Paris I will definitely spend more time there.

There is a fun animation available about the ghosts of Père-Lachaise you can watch, I rather enjoyed it.

https://www.literacyshed.com/pere-lachaise.html