Père Lachaise

Métro: Père Lachaise (line 2 or 3)
Access:8, boulevard de Ménilmontant 75020 Paris
            16, rue du Repos, 75020 Paris
Hours:everyday from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm (varies according to the season check web for details)
Cost: Free
Website: http://www.pere-lachaise.com/

"Wanna go to the cemetery for our date?" My first reaction is "Huh???"
Being a French native, I've seen plenty of them and they are spooky, creepy and plain sad; so far from the beautiful cemeteries of the US or England. So no, I don't want to go to a cemetery for our date when we're living in the city of love.
But my hubby has a lot of charming arguments and some logical ones too like for instance: "It would be a good blog entry" or "You've never been there? Really?"

***Big Sigh***

Off we went to Père Lachaise, one of the most famous cemeteries of France. I have to say that I was wrong. It is not a spooky place. Quite far from it, it is really peaceful. It's a small village inside of a big city. We should rename it "Cool Deads". It would go like:

Someone 1: "Where can I find Chopin?"
Someone 2: "Don't you know he resides in Cool Deads?"

Okay it's pushing it a little. It's not a happy retirees community but for a cemetery. However, it's a really awesome place.

Of course, it's free. It's a cemetery after all but you will find people selling maps at the entrance. It costs about 1-2 euros but you can actually get a free one at the guardian houses. Personally, we bought one because we did not know better. You will need to be well prepared if you want to check out some of the famous graves because, Père Lachaise is a a maze. It's a gigantic. The website is really well done and it's a lot more friendly using that a regular map.

Père Lachaise is placed on one of the 7 hills of Paris. It was inhabited as soon as the Middle Ages by clergymen. In 1430, it was bought by a rich merchant who constructed a lavish mansion there. It was then acquired 2 centuries later by Jesuits. It was used for convalescence or rest of the bourgeoisie and royalty. But it takes its name after François d'Aix de La Chaise (1624-1709) aka Father La Chaise who was the confessor of Louis XIV. Through the years, it went through a few landlords to be finally abandoned.

 

In 1765, a law is passed under Napoléon Bonaparte (then a consul) to ban cemeteries in Paris for sanitary reasons and to move them to the outskirts of the city. The law also stipulated than criminals, excommunicated souls, comedians and poor ones had the right of being buried: a first in Paris. It was then decided to acquire the property of Père Lachaise to create a cemetery.

The problem was that it wasn't favoured by Parisians who thought that it was a poor and immoral neighborhood. In 1817, the mayor of Paris decides to transfer the remains of Molière, La Fontaine and Héloïse and Abélard to Père Lachaise. Great marketing move!

There are so many famous residents buried there that it is hard to name them. But in an attempt to name a few:

Honoré de BALZAC (48 division)
Frédéric CHOPIN (11 division)
Eugène DELACROIX (49 division)
HELOISE and ABELARD (7 division)
MOLIERE (25 division)
Jim MORRISON (18 division)
Edith PIAF (97 division)
Camille PISSARO (7 division)
Marcel PROUST (85 division)
Georges SEURAT (66 division)
Oscar WILDE (89 division)

Check out also the monuments dedicated to the fallen of wars and the huge neo-Byzantine crematorium.

So I can officially say it was a really good date especially on a sunny fall day! By the way, special thanks to my better half for some of his amazing pictures.