Cimetière du Père Lachaise
Good for: Adventure seekers
Not good for: small children, elderly people
- Address
- 16 rue du Repos 20e, 75020
- Transport
- Website
- Phone
- 01 55 25 82 10
- Price
- admission free, maps (sold at nearby kiosks) €5, 2hr guided tour: full €6.00, conc €3.00
- Hours
- 8am-6pm Mon-Fri, from 8.30am Sat, from 9am Sun
Lonely Planet review for Cimetière du Père Lachaise
The world’s most visited cemetery, Père Lachaise (named after a confessor of Louis XIV) opened its one-way doors in 1804. Its 69,000 ornate, even ostentatious, tombs of the rich and/or famous form a verdant, 44-hectare sculpture garden. Among the 800,000 people buried here are: the composer Chopin; the playwright Molière; the poet Apollinaire; writers Balzac, Proust, Gertrude Stein and Colette; the actors Simone Signoret, Sarah Bernhardt and Yves Montand; the painters Pissarro, Seurat, Modigliani and Delacroix; the chanteuse Édith Piaf; the dancer Isadora Duncan; and even those immortal 12th-century lovers, Abélard and Héloïse, whose remains were disinterred and reburied here together in 1817 beneath a neo-Gothic tombstone.
Particularly visited graves are those of Oscar Wilde, interred in division 89 in 1900, and 1960s rock star Jim Morrison, who died in a flat at 17-19 rue Beautreillis (4e; Map p 148) in the Marais in 1971 and is buried in division 6.
On 27 May 1871, the last of the Communard insurgents, cornered by government forces, fought a hopeless, all-night battle among the tombstones. In the morning, the 147 survivors were lined up against the Mur des Fédérés (Wall of the Federalists), shot and buried where they fell in a mass grave. It is in the southeastern section of the cemetery.
Père Lachaise has five entrances, two of which are on blvd de Ménilmontant. Maps indicating the location of noteworthy graves are available for free from the conservation office in the southwestern corner of the cemetery. Organised tours in French depart from here.
Traveller reviews for Cimetière du Père Lachaise (3)
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Unlike any cemetary that I have ever been
tanzonholiday recommends this,
This is a really huge cemetary and I would advise you to buy one of those little maps to find gravesites as trying to find burial spots on your own is not easy. It's a beautiful cemetary and very unusual. Some notables include Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Yves Montand.
Good for: Adventure seekers
Not good for: small children, elderly people
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