What? You’re going to revisit Paris, and you’re choosing to show us, and to write about, your visit to a cemetery and your ride on as bus??
Yes, I am. BUT not about just any cemetery. I am going to write about one of the most famous cemeteries in the world, “Cimetière du Père Lachaise”. AND, I’m going to tell you about one of the most important bus routes in Paris, especially for travellers, route 69 … easy to remember. 🙂
Some of these shots are not the best photos I have ever taken, but they should paint a good enough picture for you. I am hoping to give you a sense of what these two experiences are all about to get you thinking about trying them out the next time you are in Paris.
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise is one of Paris’ biggest tourist attractions. In fact, it is the most visited Cemetery in the world. You can read more about its history here on this Wikipedia entry. As you will see from the pictures below it’s generally a nice place to visit and walk around, but the big attraction is the graves of some very famous people who are buried there.
The number of famous or infamous folks who are buried here is prodigious. You will find photos of the graves of some of these individuals in my collection.
If you would like to review the entire list of famous graves it is available here in this Wikipedia offering. We’re talking about the likes of Isadora Duncan, Molière, Marcel Proust, Sarah Bernhardt, Honoré de Balzac, and Gertrude Stein, just to mention a few. This second “famous grave link” from the www.parisdiscoveryguide.com site provides a shorter list but includes many more interesting photos of famous graves than the Wikipedia article. Better than mine.
If you would like to drill down into more information or images about Père Lachaise Cemetery, a simple Google search will provide you with plenty of links. It is a great place to visit… even though the Love-goddess wasn’t keen on the idea to start with… she enjoyed her visit there immensely… I think. 🙂
The photo presentation begins with three different Maps. I will mention different options for map usage as I speak about these, but here is a link to a printable map of the famous gravesites that you could print out at home and take with you. All of the photos were taken at the end of October in 2007. https://www.api-site.paris.fr/paris/public/2018%2F9%2FCPLMapEN.pdf.
This first shot, is a photo I took of one of the guide signs on the site. I am assuming they are still scattered throughout the cemetery to help you find your way. They don’t show you where the famous graves are located, but we did manage to secure a guide map while we were there that helped us find them. Sorry, I cannot tell you where to get one, but you could print this one out and take it with you.
This second map gives you a general overview of Père Lachaise, but more importantly it shows you the streets surrounding it and the various Metro stops. If you travel there by subway, you can get off at any of the three stops (circled M) and find your way onto the site. You can also get there by bus. More on that later.
Finally, the third map is one that I generated using Google Maps. If you look closely you will see that it shows the actual location of some of the famous graves. So, you could simply fire up your phone when you are there and use Google Maps to find, and get directions to, the graves you want to visit.
This is the gate where we entered, but there are lots of entries into the cemetery, and most have these semi-imposing, interesting gateways. I can’t recall exactly where we entered, but I don’t believe it was the main entrance.
The first famous tomb we came upon was Chopin’s. As you can see, people had left lots of beautiful flowers and another tokens of appreciation.
Père Lachaise is simply a lovely place to walk around in. It is a beautiful park-like setting, and many of the tombs are just absolutely magnificent structures.
We spotted lots of Parisians just strolling about or relaxing.
So here it is, Père Lachaise’s most famous grave, Jim Morrison’s. Paris is where he “broke on through to the other side”… hence, he was buried there. When we arrived, an attendant was removing a bottle of whiskey from the top of his tombstone. If you look closely you can see one of the several “joints” that had been left by admirers.
A bit of a close-up view. As with many of these graves, people leave handwritten notes and special tokens. Not sure what’s wrapped up in the tinfoil.
This might be the most famous French citizen buried at Père Lachaise, the singer Édith Piaf. Again, lots of flowers and tokens.
Obviously, someone had seen the Édith Piaf musical and had left their tickets to honour her.
I once heard that this was the most desecrated tomb in all of France. The grave of Oscar Wilde. For some reason, kissing the tomb with bright red lipstick became a phenomenon. Someone even went to the trouble to chisel off the penis from the sphinxlike figure. For the record, Jewish graves are the ones that are most frequently desecrated in France. Will this anti-Semitic madness never end?
Here is a better view without people. There may have been some restoration and protection of this tomb conducted recently. So, you may not get to see it in this condition.
You can just make out Oscar Wilde’s name chiselled into the side underneath all of the lipstick markings and graffiti.
Here we have two French models waiting for bus 69 🙂 This shot was taken the very first time we used this particular bus route. This stop was close by to where we were staying in the Rue Cler area, so easy-peasy getting to Père Lachaise. You can read a brief overview about Rue Cler in the Paris Perfect article cited above.
This is a map of the bus route. It starts at the Eiffel Tower and ends out at Père Lachaise Cemetery. As you can see the route out and the route back vary slightly, but they do get you to the same general area. So, you can use the same bus to get back to where you started. Clicking on this image will bring up a larger view.
On the visit to Paris when we went to Père Lachaise we stayed at this hotel, the Hotel Prince. As I said to the Love-goddess, I am quite certain that no prince ever stayed here. 🙂 We found this hotel listed in a Rick Steves’ travel guide, as we often do. I would have to say though, this is the one that we least enjoyed staying at during all of our years travelling in Europe. There were lots of decent restaurants close by however.
It was in a great location however, within spitting distance of the Eiffel Tower and Rue Cler.
Rue Cler is one of Paris’ great market streets. The street is lined with all kinds of specialty food shops, including fruit and vegetable sellers, charcuterie shops, lovely cheese stores, fish shops, etc. There is even a supermarket or two.
Lots of great restaurants as well.
This charcuterie shop is a great place to pick up a whole roasted chicken for dinner if you just want to eat in your hotel room.
The building with the rows of flower boxes in the windows is a hotel right on Rue Cler that Rick Steves recommends, the Grand Hôtel Lévêque. It would be a great place to stay. I think it was fully booked when we ended up at the Hotel Prince.
My “Final” Word
My final word on Père Lachaise cemetery is this. In my will I have directed anyone who survives me that I would like to have my ashes spread there. This is not as easy as it might seem. Even to have your ashes spread at Père Lachaise you either have to be a resident of Paris, or you have to die there. So, my plan is to die in Paris. Not a bad way to go really. 🙂
