The cemetery was opened in 1804 by Napoleon, and is in the 20th, so, thanks to the snail/spiral arrangement of the arrondissements it’s just a short work from home. It’s main reason for being a sightseeing destination are the many graves of the famous – Abelard and Heloise, Jim Morrison, Proust, Celine, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, and many more are all buried there. It is a huge cemetery with acres upon acres filled with graves. Wandering within it felt like exploring some sort of city of the dead, particularly because it’s markedly quieter than the neighbouring areas. The impression of a city is especially strong because of all the large number of crypts, although given their size it would be a kind of creepy three quarters scale city
It’s still in use – there were a couple of funerals in process when we visited. A lot of the older grave sites look forgotten and uncared for. There are lots of ostentatious graves (some of which are rusted and ill kempt) – I would have thought death put an end to that kind of vanity. It also seemed a bit weird to be sightseeing in a cemetery, and I don’t get the attraction of celebrity grave sites – wouldn’t the place they’d lived in give you a better sense of them rather than where their body has ended up? I must be in the minority with that view: Oscar Wilde’s tomb has a clear perspex wall enclosing it (which had graffiti scratched into it) as well as an additional set of metal barriers around it because of the amount of attention it gets.
I found the WW I & II Memorials the most affecting, and I think that’s because they weren’t for individuals. The number and specificity of them e.g. for particular groups or particular concentration camps made it easier to feel the scale and consequences of it.
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