Père Lachaise: The cemetery where every star wants to be buried
A person could spend all day in the cemetery Père Lachaise, situated in Paris’ 20th Arrondissement, spanning 110 acres, making it the biggest in the city, and thanks to the ghosts that haunt the spot and the names who reside there, it is also the most visited necropolis in the world.
Dark tourism has always been a thing. People are naturally attracted to the morbid side of things, to death, to darkness and to sites where it happened. While some would rather die themselves than freely choose to wander around a cemetery, for others, it’s a romantic day out. As Morrissey put it once, “A dreaded sunny day, so let’s go where we’re happy, and I meet you at the cemetery gates”.
Surely, Morrissey was singing about Southern Cemetery in Manchester, but as he references a variety of different poets and artists, including Keats and Yeats, he’s tapping into something bigger. He’s tapping into the artistic tradition of people flocking to the graves of their idols to leave flowers, or even just placing a stone as a token on the headstone as a tribute, but also simply the morbid romance of it all, of rubbing your life in the face of the dead, putting on a nice outside, sneaking in some wine and practically dancing between the rows of the graves.
Père Lachaise is so popular because that romance seems built in. On any given day, you can go and find people in their finest clothes, girls in long flowing dresses, young men in beaten-up vintage suits with a cigarette in their mouth, there to honour idols of rock, art, literature, film and beyond. But it’s exactly their presence that keeps the appeal of the place renewing.
During a lap of the cemetery, you can say hello to French icons like Édith Piaf, Anna Karina, see the famed grave of French journalist Victor Noir that became an odd fertility ritual, or sit in front of philosopher Marcel Proust’s grave and talk through some of his existential parlour questions.
But beyond the French idols buried in their home country, Père Lachaise has international appeal. Jim Morrison’s grave is always surrounded by rock and roll pilgrims, and during Morrison’s own time in Paris, he too would be found wandering the spot, leading to the decision to bury him there rather than moving his body back to the States.
The same story goes for Oscar Wilde, who died while living penniless in Paris. Since a glorious epitaph has been built in the writer’s honour, but his love for Paris, and the city’s love for this morbid, gothic romantic relationship with death, spoke to him.
Because of that, it spirals around. As the graveyard gains an iconic resident and is written into popular and artistic culture because of that, more people flock to the spot, and more artists dream of lying there too.
“Drop the toaster in the bath, boil my brains and fry my ass,” Luvcat teases of an upcoming murder ballad, before singing to her murderous lover, “Just promise me you’ll pay to bury me at Père Lachaise”. The desire lives on, leading to the cemetery now technically being full as a home to over two million bodies interred, including so many names written into history who are probably having the most fascinating conversations and wildest parties once the gates are locked and the night is still.
