The world’s most visited cemetery – Wilde’s kissed sphinx, Morrison’s vigil, Chopin’s heartless grave, and the Communards’ wall in one hillside republic of the dead.
At a glance
- Type
- Garden cemetery
- Period
- 1804
- Style
- Romantic garden necropolis
- Location
- 20th arrondissement, Paris, France
- Coordinates
- 48.8614, 2.3933
- Designer
- Alexandre-Theodore Brongniart
Overview
Napoleon’s prefect opened Pere Lachaise in 1804 as the hygienic hillside answer to churchyard crowding – and invented the garden cemetery the world copied. Slow sales ended with marketing’s masterstroke: Moliere’s and La Fontaine’s reburials, then Abelard and Heloise’s gothic canopy – celebrity residence selling eternity. Seventy thousand monuments now terrace the hill: Wilde’s Epstein sphinx, Chopin (heart in Warsaw), Piaf, Proust, and Jim Morrison’s guarded corner.
History
The Commune’s last fighters died against the Mur des Federes in May 1871 – the wall remains the left’s pilgrimage each spring. Crematorium domes, Holocaust memorials’ anguished bronzes, and the columbarium’s walls write the city’s whole modern memory among the chestnuts.
Architecture and Design
Brongniart’s winding contours stage sepulchral architecture’s full catalogue – pharaonic obelisks to nouveau dragonflies; the chapel hill’s view runs to the Pantheon. Cats and crows administer the lanes’ moods.
Cultural significance
Pere Lachaise is memory’s landscape model worldwide and Paris’ open-air pantheon – three million visitors walking biography’s avenues yearly.
Visiting today
Free daily; maps at gates or apps guide the名 tombs. Quiet courtesy rules – residents’ families still bury here.
Getting there
Pere Lachaise or Gambetta metro stations flank the hill’s two gates.
Sources and resources
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