The tombs of celebrated singers, writers, artists, statesmen and revolutionaries can be found among the thousands buried in Paris' leafy Père Lachaise Cemetery. It is reputedly the world's most-visited cemetery, with tombs ranging from the ostentatious to the understatedly simple.
Opened in 1804, the cemetery was named in honour of Louis XIV's confessor, Le Père du Lachaise and designed by architect Brongiart. After Molière, La Fontaine and mythic medieval lovers Abelard and Héloise were moved here in 1817, it quickly became the ultimate status symbol to be buried here.
Jim Morrison's grave is perhaps the most visited, while literary types come to pay homage to Molière, Proust and Wilde, among others. Wilde's impressive headstone (by sculptor Epstein) depicts a male, winged angel, whose genitals have been knocked off by somebody whose sensibilities were offended. Great 19th-century French painters such as Corot, Delacroix, Ingres and Géricault are also interred here.
Alongside those posthumously immortalised are memorials to those who died in anonymity, in Nazi concentration camps and during the Resistance. Watch out for the Mur des Féderés, against which the last revolutionaries of the 1871 Paris Commune were lined up and shot.
Jim Morrison's grave is perhaps the most visited, while literary types come to pay homage to Molière, Proust and Wilde, among others. Wilde's impressive headstone (by sculptor Epstein) depicts a male, winged angel, whose genitals have been knocked off by somebody whose sensibilities were offended. Great 19th-century French painters such as Corot, Delacroix, Ingres and Géricault are also interred here.
Alongside those posthumously immortalised are memorials to those who died in anonymity, in Nazi concentration camps and during the Resistance. Watch out for the Mur des Féderés, against which the last revolutionaries of the 1871 Paris Commune were lined up and shot.
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