It was with some trepidation that I approached the famed cemetery of Père-Lachaise, as I had been the one to propose that we spend one of our precious Paris days there.  HL was accustomed to my fondness for graveyards, but I did not want to tax Miri’s patience with my enthusiasm for exploring this particular landmark.  Situated in the 20th Arrondissement, Père-Lachaise had been on the outskirts of the city when it was established in 1804.  Before that, people were buried in churchyards or inside churches, frequently beneath the stone floors.

         As the population of Paris swelled, so did the need for burial spaces.  A series of gruesome churchyard collapses convinced the city counselors to open several municipal cemeteries on the fringes of the capital.  The citizenry was reluctant to abandon the previous practice, especially members of traditional families associated with a specific diocese.  To make the eastern municipal cemetery more attractive, the authorities referred to it as Le Cimitière du Père-Lachaise (The Cemetery of Father Lachaise), after the Jesuit priest who had once had a house on the property.  Père Lachaise had served as Louis XIV’s confessor, a position that may have left the priest little leisure.  The cemetery, however, was and still is secular, with no restrictions regarding the religion — or lack thereof — of the deceased.

         Not content with creating the false impression that the new cemetery was hallowed ground, the city counselors had several cultural and military heroes exhumed from their various resting places and reburied in Père-Lachaise.  The idea of proximity to celebrities proved just as seductive in 19th Century France as it is today.  Now Père-Lachaise is a desirable final address, replete with war memorials and famous tombs.  Among the best known are the monuments of the luckless medieval lovers Héloise and Abelard, probably the oldest identifiable burials. 


          More than three million visitors walk the cemetery’s cobbled paths annually.  Its 44 hectares (110 acres) comprise the largest
 green space in Paris.  The tombs displayed the architectural styles of their periods, with the carvers’ individual flourishes. Some were deliberately anachronistic.  Recently erected headstones were  interspersed with historic ones. A million people are interred in 70,000 graves, niches, and mausolea.  Père-Lachaise is a true necropolis, a sprawling city of the dead.


          The dancer Isadora Duncan keeps  posthumous company with the musicians Frédéric Chopin and Edith Piaf, as well as the actors Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, and Sarah Bernhardt.  Signoret and Montand share a headstone.  Jim Morrison’s grave gets the most attention, owing to the rock singer’s notoriety, but the location and marker were so unremarkable that we almost missed it.


          Oscar Wilde is one of many writers in Père-Lachaise, as are Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Colette.  Jacob Epstein sculpted Wilde’s monument.  Wilde continued to arouse strong feelings even after death. The stone angel was vandalized in the 1960’s, presumably by homophobes.  It was repaired, but I hate to think of Paris being blighted by such malice; after all, The  City of Love is one of its sobriquets.  And the tomb has been protected with glass sheets since the 1990’s, after it was marked repeatedly with heavily lipsticked kisses.

          Thousands of trees enhance the cemetery’s tranquility.  The most common of the 80 species planted there are limes, maples, ashes, boxwoods and cedars.

          The novelist Colette wrote about her attachment to her French Bulldog, Toby.  So any of her admirers could have added the plastic bulldog to the grave decorations.  The breed has become a global favorite during the past few decades.  In this, as in other aspects of her life, Colette anticipated the trend.