Cimetière du Père Lachaise aka: Père Lachaise Cemetery

...as the first time I arrived just before it closed (first cemetary I’ve ever visited with opening hours). The best way I can describe it is literally a city of the dead; it has streets, neighbourhoods and even taller “buildings” in the form of the more ostenatious tombs. There was one tomb that I wanted to see that I just could not find – the one of the lion-tamer with a statue showing him riding his pet lion (who killed him). The most moving part by far is the corner dedicated to memorials for the holocaust victims – the statues definitely do not shy away from the reality of the victims’ suffering.

I spent a semester in Holland while in college, and one week we took a class excursion to Paris. I was so excited about visiting this cemetery, especially when I learned that my favorite art history professor would be giving the tour.

Unfortunately, the morning of one of our classmates lost his passport and Eurail pass. So while our professor was dealing with him, the rest of us wondered around the cemetery on our own. It was still cool, and I’m very happy I had a chance to see it (and Jim Morrison’s grave before he’s evicted…), but I’m still bummed out about it.

I love cemeteries and could have spent the whole day here searching out the interesting tombs of the famous and not so famous. But there were 5 other people in my group, 3 of whom would not have appreciated so much a day of traipsing about amongst the dead. We did find Jim Morrison and Chopin and this interesting tomb of a mid-19th century partisan. Excellently creepy!

the first time i went to paris, i arrived in the early evening and couldn’t sleep all night. I went walking just before dawn and ended up here, exhausted and hungry, near hallucinating, and wandered around for a couple of hours, it was great, though cortazar lives in montparnasse….

The fact that so many famous people have been buried here is of course a prime reason why it’s such an attraction…but it is also a very captivating location, a stillness in the heart of the city, not truly as silent as one could hope for, but even so. I think what moved me the most were the series of memorials for various victims of the Holocaust.