An afternoon at Père Lachaise

No, we're not obsessed with death, as you might think, with so many visits to mausoleums and cemeteries. But after viewing the cemeteries of Montmartre, Passy, and St. Vincent, our visit would not be complete without paying our respects at Père La Chaise.

Père La Chaise is the largest cemetery in Paris. It stretches across 110 acres, according to Wikipedia. There are more than a million people buried there. It is not a flat cemetery, either--it has many hills and steps. Among the famous people interred there (too many to list them all) include the lovers Héloïse and Abelard, along with Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison.

We were there on a warm summer day with a soft breeze blowing through the trees. We had a picnic on a bench overlooking Paris in the distance. The Pantheon and the Montparnasse Tower were barely visible through the trees. Because Père La Chaise is so large and the metro station was at the far end of the cemetery, we did not visit as many graves as we expected to, but we did get a sense of the place.

I took a photoi of Jim Morrison's grave, as promised to my sister-in-law. It has several photos of him and offerings of flowers an candles from fans atop it. The inscription, in Greek, KATA TON DAIMONA EAYTOY, translates as "Faithful to his own spirit."

Next to the grave is this other "memorial," similar to Seattle's gum wall, where fans have left their own salivary monument on a bamboo sheath that wraps around a tree. (Presumably the authorities have provided the sheath to protect the tree?)

The grave of Edith Piaf includes a line from the song  L'hymne à L'amour, "Dieu réunit ceux qui s'aiment. " ("God reunites those who love each other.")

To be buried in Père La Chaise, you need to be a Parisian citizen or someone who dies in Paris.  Then your family needs to either pay a rental fee for 10 years or more, or buy a spot in perpetuity.  Jim Morrison's grave is one that was bought in perpetuity, but if a family gets a rental and fails to renew the rental fee, the remains will be disinterred.  What happens to them after that, I'm not sure.

Père La Chaise is a peaceful place to visit.  But I confess I like "our" cemetery in Montmartre more.  It's smaller and more approachable, but anyone who visits Paris should go to one of these beautiful old cemeteries if only to pause and ponder.