Pere lachaise how many graves

A walk around the cemetery is a popular outing and we understand why having spent some time exploring. The graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Chopin are a mix of the beautiful and the fascinating and the cemetery is filled with incredibly ornate and unique tombs. Entrance: There are several entrances to the cemetery. Porte Gambetta is an excellent starting point for a visit as this allows you to start walking from the top of the hill and, I for one, prefer downhill to uphill walking!

The cemetery: The cemetery is split into divisions which are signposted and marked by paths. Map: Maps can be purchased in some of the small florists surrounding the entrance. We did our planning through the Pere Lachaise website before we visited and knew approximately where the graves of Wilde, Morrison and Chopin were located. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

His longtime girlfriend, Pamela Courson, found his body in the bathtub at the Marais apartment where they were living.

She became the most popular entertainer in France after World War II, toured internationally to great acclaim, and performed frequently at the Olympia music hall, the most famous venue in Paris. Her grave is one of the most-visited at Pere Lachaise, and artists still cover her most popular song, "La Vie en Rose," today.

Division Simone Signoret and Yves Montand were German-born and Italian-born, respectively, French actors who married in and co-starred in a number of films. Montand, whose good looks landed him roles in numerous French and American films as well as on stage on Broadway, was also a singer and frequently performed in Paris at the Olympia.

As you can see in the photo, their simple grave rests under a beautiful birch tree - a quiet spot in this "City of the Dead. Renowned French pianist France Clidat was best known for her recordings of Franz Liszt and the complete piano works of Eric Satie during the s, '70s, and '80s.

She also taught master classes and gave roughly 2, performances in concert halls around the world. Etienne Robertson born Etienne Gaspard Robert was actually a well-known Belgium physicist with a specialty in optics who entertained the masses as a stage magician and illusionist who performed a "phantasmagoria" show by using a "magic lantern" to project ghosts and spirits, complete with optical illusions, sound effects, and spooky music.

Robertson's huge tomb fairly drips with winged ghouls and demons, and is well worth seeking out. A bas-relief on one side depicts a scene from one of his shows, with ghosts, ghosts, and winged monsters frightening his audience. The absolute best image: a winged skeleton flying over the audience while playing a horn. Singer Ahmet Kaya, a Turkish Kurd, gained success and fame in his homeland of Turkey before facing massive opposition when he decided to sing and record in Kurdish.

Following political persecution, he fled to Paris where he died from a heart attack in at age Sarah Bernhardt was an enormously successful French stage actress who gained international acclaim after multiple world tours, and transitioned to starring roles in moving pictures late in her life. She was renowned for her numerous lovers, many of whom remained her friend, from the top echelons of French society.

In addition, Bernhardt was an accomplished painter and sculptor, and she also wrote a textbook on the art of acting toward the end of her life. His life was cut short when the skylight of his Paris home collapsed during a birthday celebration on the roof with a group of friends.

German-born film director, known for his fluid camera work and tracking shots. Unusual for his time, he showed a female perspective in some of his films. Orphuls fled Germany in the s as Nazis rose to power, and became a French citizen in ; after the German invasion of France, he fled again to the U.

Division 87, Box exterior. Kurdish actor and then film director from Turkey who focused on the plights of working class people in his country. After political persecution and imprisonment, he fled to France in and lived in Paris for the remainder of his life. American dancer and choreographer known for her emphasis on organic fluidity of movement rather than the structured form of classical ballet. She died when the long scarf she was wearing caught in the spokes of the wheel of an open-air auto in which she was riding.

Division 87, Box in the Columbarium. Acclaimed American opera star, famous for the unique quality of her mezzo-soprano voice and her acting skills that enabled to bring her characters to life on stage. She was also known for a long-standing romance with Aristotle Onassis that continued after his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy. Division 87, Box , 1st sub-level of the Columbarium; ashes scattered over the Aegean Sea. Renowned French mime artist and actor, best known for his "Bip the Clown" persona.

As a member of the the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, Marceau helped rescue and save numerous children from being deported to concentration camps. After the war, his career as a mime began slowly at first, and then his fame skyrocketed thanks to his performances on televisions and in movies. Jane Avril born Jeanne Louise Beaudon overcame crushing poverty and an abusive family life to become the Moulin Rouge can-can dancer immortalized in posters and painting by Henri de Toulouse-Latrec to whom she was both friend and muse, and later portrayed in the Moulin Rouge movies by Zsa Zsa Gabor version and Nicole Kidman Her remains are buried at Pere Lachaise in the family tomb of her husband, printmaker Maurice Biais.

It's contagious - you may smile back as you walk by. Although French actor Fernand Arbelot may no longer remembered for his own accomplishments, the realistic sculpture by Belgium sculptor Adolphe Wansart of him lying on his tomb while holding a mask representing his grieving wife see the tear dripping from her eye? He created it around and you can see it in the flowing organic forms of Art Nouveau.

Division 1. The Moreau-Vauthier family tomb at Pere Lachaise is topped with a beautiful bronze statue of a grieving woman signed "A. Moreau Vauthier," who was mostly likely French sculptor Augustin Jean Moreau Vauthier , father of Paul Moreau-Vauthier , creator of the cemetery's bas-relief wall memorial to commemorate victims who died during the Paris Commune fighting.

The tomb contains the remains of over a dozen family members, including Augustin Jean and Paul. This beautiful bronze sculpture depicting a sorrowful woman holding a picture, presumably of the deceased, is on the tomb of Leon Philippe Beclard who died in Tangier, Morocco while serving as Minister of Finance for Napoleon III.

Division 4. His epitaph: Lord, give me this hope to live again in the melancholy eternity of the book. Just as Irish playwright, novelist, journalist and poet Oscar Wilde achieved immense success and popularity, he was convicted by a British court of "gross indecency with men" and sentenced to two years of imprisonment with hard labor. Upon his release, he fled for France where he remained in exile until his death from meningitis three years later.

Wilde's Egyptian-themed tomb at Pere Lachaise, created by sculptor Jacob Epstein, has sustained damage through the years after visitors started applying heavy coats of lipstick to their lips and then kissing the monument; efforts to clean the stone has caused it to degrade. A glass barrier erected in has been only partially effective at preventing the kisses, as you can see in the photo above.

His grave at Pere Lachaise receives numerous visitors. Miguel Angel Asturias was a Guatemalan poet, novelist, and diplomat who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in as well as numerous other awards.

He studied at the Sorbonne, lived in Paris for several periods, served as the Guatemalan ambassador to France from , and then lived in Paris as a permanent resident for the rest of his life. He wrote operas for the Paris Opera during the s, and then after a period in Bologna, returned to Paris in where he lived for the rest of his life and held popular musical salons every Saturday attended by musicians and artists including Franz Liszt, Guiseppe Verdi, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Anton Rubenstein, and Joseph Joachim.

Colette born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was a prolific French writer and stage actress. Her best known works are The Vagabond, which explores a woman's quest for an independent life in a male-dominated society, and Gigi, which was first made into a French film, then adapted for the stage with Audrey Hepburn in the starring role, and finally turned into an Academy Award-winning Hollywood musical.

A dispute between two newspapers, including the one where Noir worked, escalated and led to an altercation when ended with the prince calling Noir and his colleagues "menials," slapping Noir's face, and then shooting him dead.

When a court acquitted the prince of murder, an uproar including violent demonstrations took place. Nine months later, the Emperor's unpopular regime was overthrown during the Franco-Prussian War. Sculptor Jules Dalou created the realistic life-size bronze sculpture of Noir to appear as though he has just fallen in the street.

The slight bulge in his trousers has made Noir's grave one of the most popular in the cemetery due to a legend that rubbing it will provide fertility benefits. Italian composer and child prodigy Luigi Cherubini was best known for his operas during his life, which he mostly spent in France where he was highly acclaimed. Today, you're more likely to hear his church music and in particular his chamber music, especially in the concerts in historic churches that take place in Paris.

Cherubini's large tomb includes a bas-relief sculpture designed by Augustin-Alexandre Dumont showing "Music" crowning a bust of the composer with a laurel wreath. On top of his tomb in Pere Lachaise is a rough-hewn granite monument shaped like a menhir. Beaumarchais born Pierre-Augustin Caron - he added the "de Beaumarchais" for dramatic effect after his first marriage was a renaissance man - a spy, diplomat, musician, inventor, publisher, watchmaker, horticulturist, aspiring slave trader, supplier of drinking water to Paris, teacher, financier, and strong supporter of both the American and the French Revolutions.

Today, Beaumarchais is best remembered for two of his plays, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, which Mozart and Rossini, respectively, turned into operas that are still frequently performed. Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini achieved enormous success during his short life for his many bel canto style operas. Today, he is best remembered for his final masterpiece, I Puritani, which is still performed periodically in Paris.

French opera composer Georges Bizet was just beginning to gain success and widespread recognition when his life was cut short by a heart attack at age His final and best opera, Carmen, is still immensely popular today and much of its music such as "Habanera" and "The Toreador's Song" is instantly recognizable.

A stately upright monument on his tomb features a bronze laurel wreath encircling a lyre. French writer Jean de la Fontaine became famous for his Fables - poetic renditions of tales with a moral twist dating back to the Middle Ages - and his popularity continued long after his death, making his supposed remains ideal for giving the new Pere Lachaise Cemetery the needed cachet to attract other burials.

He was close friends with other leading literary figures of his time, including playwrights Moliere and Racine. For a couple of centuries before Pere Lachaise opened in , Paris graveyards typically small plots next to churches had become so overcrowded that the bodies of everyone except the nobility, high ranking church officials, and the very rich were tossed into common graves.

So despite their fame at the time of their deaths, La Fontaine and Moliere had been buried in common graves in the former Les Innocents and Saint Joseph Cemeteries. The bones that were moved and reburied at Pere Lachaise almost certainly belonged to someone else. The possibly of having one's own burial plot with no bones of strangers mixed in was part of Pere Lachaise's initial promotional campaign.

Francis Poulenc was a French pianist and composer whose music spanned a range of genres. He's particularly well-known for his solo piano pieces, much of which is light-hearted and playful in the spirit of Eric Satie, and his religious music.

His compositions are widely performed in Paris concert venues, and around the world. Division 5. American writer who settled in Paris in where she met her life partner, Alice B. Scott Fitzgerald. German-Jewish Gerda Taro born Gerta Pohorylle was a photojournalist and anti-fascist who fled to Paris in to escape the rising antisemitism in her homeland.

When civil war broke out in Spain, she traveled there and photographed from the front lines, publishing her photos under her own name; in some cases, her war photography provided the only testimony to contradict propaganda by the Nationalist forces. She died in an accident during a battle on the front at age 26, and was given a grand funeral in Paris.

Sculptor Alberto Giacometti created the monument for her grave. American writer who focused much of his work on the effects of racial discrimination violence on African Americans. He is best known for his novel Native Son , which he completed with financial support from a Guggenheim award, and memoir Black Boy.

American writer as well as confidant, lover, secretary, and cook for Gertrude Stein, who cast Toklas in the role of narrator in Stein's own memoire, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Cookbook," famous during the s hippie culture for its recipe for hashish fudge. Toklas is buried next to Stein.

When is the best time to visit Pere Lachaise? Learn about what to expect during each season. Arman born Armand Fernandez, later changed to Armand Pierre Arman was a French-born American conceptual artist renowned during the second half of the 20th century for creating sculptures out of "accumulations" of identical objects such as cellos or cars, and out of garbage.

Here are the top 14 graves — according to Joe — in video form subscribe for more followed by more info below. Perhaps not very hygienic but a sight to see, nonetheless. Why does this journalist have such a massive bulge in his pantaloons? Actress Sarah Bernhardt, a staple feature on the Paris theatre scene years ago, was famed for her dramatic deaths on stage.

Good luck finding this one. The gravestone of painter and sculptor Amadeo Modigliani is hidden not too far from Edith Piaf behind a huge bush. Joe talks at length about this sculpture in the podcast. There are 60 spots underground for this family… with 9 spots still remaining.

Elizaveta Alexandrovna Stroganova was a Russian aristocrat and has the tomb to match. It is absolutely enormous and stretches several storeys into the air.