Paris: The Birthday Trip - Day 9 (part 1)
Views of Père-Lachaise cemetery.
Early Sunday morning, Paris, a cemetery, not too many people about. There will be lot of people later on - this is Père-Lachaise cemetery after all, but for the moment there are only a few of us. And all of us are consulting our free maps.
Cemetery maps are just a rough guide to the locations of some of the prominent names to be found here and we soon find ourselves wandering up and down leafy cobblestone 'streets' (photo, above right) and, respectfully, picking our way through the unfamiliar chaos of graves (photo, above left) as we search for some, any, of the graves we wanted to visit.
One problem (no, not really a problem) we encountered was the distraction of constantly being drawn to the beautiful monuments and gravestones of 'ordinary' people. In fact, they were often more interesting than some of the monuments of the famous - or the creator of the monument was more famous than the grave's occupant.
We were surprised to find that the cemetery is still in use - surprised because we had assumed that the cemetery was, judging by appearances, filled to capacity, but we found recent graves - some quite touching, like the grave of the young couple with fresh flowers and a child's plush toy obviously recently placed on it.
Here are just a few of the photographs we took:
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Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. 1780-1867. Artist. |
Théodore Géricault. 1791-1824. Artist. |
Eugène Delacroix. 1798-1863. Artist. |
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Oscar Wilde. 1854-1900. Writer, poet, playwright. |
Marcel Proust. 1871-1922. Novelist, critic, and essayist. |
Honoré de Balzac. 1799-1850. Novelist and playwright. |
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Jim Morrison. 1943-1971. Singer-songwriter, poet. Lead singer of The Doors rock band. |
Ernest Caillat is outshone by the designer of his monument - Hector Guimard, designer of the famous Paris Metro Art Nouveau entrances. | No information. Just a beautiful mausoleum. |
| Spooky but no information. | Fresh flowers. No information. | Graveyard crow. |
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Obviously We saw much more than we are able to show you here. And the physical experience, the quiet (quiet as a graveyard), the occasional sound of the distinctive French police sirens in the distance beyond the cemetery walls the only sound to remind us of the busy city all around us, the continuing Paris heatwave, the silence of the birds in the shadows, sheltering from the heat, and so on - all of these things, the things that make up the feel and the memory of the actual experience... as much as we would like to share them, I'm afraid we'll have to keep those for ourselves.
Well - things to do, places to see. And it's free day at the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens! So off we go... see you in our next entry. NOTE: A list of the cemetery's more famous residents can be found on the cemetery's website or on Wikipedia. |
 Tomb of Heloise and Abelard, one of the most celebrated and tragic couples of all time. Heloise. 1101-1164. "Of no mean beauty, she stood out above all by reason of her abundant knowledge of letters." Peter Abelard. 1079-1142. Philosopher. |
Previously: Day 1, Day 2 (part 1), Day 2 (part 2), Day 2 (part 3), Day 3 (part 1) Day 3 (part 2), Day 4 (part 1), Day 4 (part 2),
Day 5 (part 1), Day 5 (part 2), Day 5 (part 3), Day 6, Day 7 (part1), Day 7 (part2), Day 8 (part1), Day 8 (part2)
Next: Day 9 (part2)