Père Lachaise Cemetery

How do you write about a cemetery? I'm not sure. All I know is that we had wanted to go and see this very famous Parisian cemetery for a long, long time and finally decided to GO! We're very glad that we did.

Mark and I commented several times that we had never ever seen anything like it in our lives - anywhere. It was fascinating to witness how the dead are buried in Paris.

The cemetery is enormous - well over 100 acres according to the man selling maps at the gate. And, of course, the roads are made of big rounded stones. Our feet and calves hurt by the end of our tour! But, we're still glad we went.

I'll just show you some of the photos we took.

It's no surprise...it's surrounded by a big stone wall, which is so very French.


Here's a typical view across the cemetery. Just endless graves.


Here are the cobblestone 'streets' that wrap throughout.


Each street has it's own street sign.


And there are little passage ways everywhere.


You see people wandering through...most likely taking the shorter way through the cemetery rather than going around this enormous place.


This is a very common type of grave.


I don't know who would want to go into a place like this to kneel and pray. ICK!


And, we saw plenty of well developed cob webs, which Lena particularly loved. (Just kiddin'! She really hates cob webs.)


The crematorium was fascinating. Here's what it looked like at more of a distance.


And, here's what it looked like inside. Each 'box' is a place where cremated remains are placed with a marker placed over the hole.


We went to see some of the famous folks who are buried in this place.

Such as the pianist...Frederic Chopin.


Here's a close-up to prove that it's his grave.


We saw Jim Morrison's grave. I am really confused about why he would be buried in Paris, France. So very interesting.


This is the largest grave in the cemetery. It's the president of the 3rd republic of France. I'm not sure what his name was, but he sure got a sweet deal for his bones.


Here's the grave of Abelard and Heloise. I had never heard of them, but Mark had studied about them in a church history class that he had in seminary, so we went to see their grave. After our visit to Père Lachaise, we looked up their story on Wikipedia. Now that is a crazy tale!


We saw the grave of Edith Piaf. She is a wildly famous French singer whose music is known by everyone in France. (Kinda like Elvis in the USA.)


Here's the grave of Jean de la Fontaine. Our kids' school was named after him. He was a children's story writer. He's written stories that are like the Aesop's Fables in French.


We saw the grave of the French Impressionist painter, Eugene Delacroix.


And, we saw the grave of the playwright, Oscar Wilde. I have no idea why everyone kissed the glass and wrote notes in lipstick. I guess I'm missing some critical information about this man.


And, of course, many graves show the individuality of the person who died. I took several photos of fascinating things - some of them I understood and some of them I didn't. This one I totally got.


This is some guy who was an artist, painter, sculptor. It looks like he was born in France and died in New York. The thing that struck me is that it says, "Enfin Seul!" (Finally alone!) and if I am reading the scrolly writing correctly, it says 'amen'. I wonder who would put this on their grave? Absolutely crazy!

So, there you have it. A look at a Paris cemetery. If you ever get to Paris, it certainly is a fascinating place to visit.