Thursday: May 20
Père Lachaise Cemetery (Cimetière du Père-Lachaise; officially, cimetière de l'Est, "East Cemetery")
OK, you think I've lost it. But this won't be the only cemetery we visit over the weeks. Pere-Lachaise is a great visit; the lasndscape is wonderful and the tombs truly are works of art. A lot of history here, and a nice peaceful place to think, wonder and reflect. I only put a few picturesof the more famous tombs in the picture gallary.
Let's visit the cemetery of the famous dead. Cimetière du Père-Lachaise
is said to be one of the the most poetic of Paris's many attractions. Perched in
a hidden corner of northeast Paris Cimetière du Père-Lachaise draws in the
living from all over the globe. Apart from countless famous figures that are
buried at Père Lachaise it is also an incomparably secretive, peaceful place,
with its winding pathways, lush landscapes and impressive works of art.
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of
Paris, France at (48 ha, 118.6 acres),[1] though there are larger cemeteries in
the city's suburbs.
Père Lachaise is one of the most famous cemeteries in the
world. Located in the 20th arrondissement, it is reputed to be the world's
most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to
the graves of those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is
also the site of three World War I memorials.
The cemetery takes its name from the confessor to Louis XIV,
Père François de la Chaise (1624–1709), who lived in the Jesuit house rebuilt in
1682 on the site of the chapel. The property, situated on the hillside from
which the king, during the Fronde, watched skirmishing between the Condé and
Turenne, was bought by the city in 1804, laid out by Alexandre-Théodore
Brongniart, and later extended.
The cemetery was established by Napoleon I in 1804. Cemeteries
had been banned inside Paris in 1786, after the closure of the Saints Innocents
Cemetery (Cimetière des Innocents) on the fringe of Les Halles food market, on
the grounds that it presented a health hazard. (This same health hazard also led
to the creation of the famous Parisian catacombs in the south of the city.)
Several new cemeteries replaced the Parisian ones, outside the precincts of the
capital: Montmartre Cemetery in the north, Père Lachaise in the east, and
Montparnasse Cemetery in the south. At the heart of the city, in the shadow of
the Eiffel Tower, is Passy Cemetery.
At the time of its opening, the cemetery was considered to be
situated too far from the city and attracted few funerals. Consequently, the
administrators devised a marketing strategy and with great fanfare organised the
transfer of the remains of La Fontaine and Molière, in 1804. Then, in another
great spectacle in 1817, the purported remains of Pierre Abélard and Héloïse
were also transferred to the cemetery with their monument's canopy made from
fragments of the abbey of Nogent-sur-Seine (by tradition, lovers or lovelorn
singles leave letters at the crypt in tribute to the couple or in hope of
finding true love) (see disputation).
This strategy achieved its desired effect when people began
clamouring to be buried among the famous citizens. Records show that, within a
few years, Père Lachaise went from containing a few dozen permanent residents to
more than 33,000. Today there are over 300,000 bodies buried there, and many
more in the columbarium, which holds the remains of those who had requested
cremation.
The Communards' Wall (Mur des Fédérés) is also located in the
cemetery. This is the site where 147 Communards, the last defenders of the
workers' district of Belleville, were shot on 28 May 1871 — the last day of the
"Bloody Week" (Semaine Sanglante) in which the Paris Commune was crushed.
After that week, the cemetery gained a special importance to
the political left in France, manifested in annual processions sometimes drawing
tens or even hundreds of thousands of participants (some 600,000 in 1936) and
led by the main leaders of the left parties and organizations. Various prominent
left-wing leaders are buried in the vicinity, where a monument was also erected
honouring the French Brigadists (volunteers in the International Brigades in the
Spanish Civil War).
Adolphe Thiers, widely blamed for the massacres of "Bloody
Week", is an ironic resident of the cemetery. His tomb has occasionally been
subject to vandalism.
Click here to see other pictures
Click here to see other pictures