7. Père Lachaise Cemetery

The cemetery of Père Lachaise is 4.5 km from our apartment and it takes 63 minutes to walk there, at a pretty fair pace!  How do I know this?  Because that is where we went yesterday afternoon.  I knew we were going to Père Lachaise - but I didn't realise we were going to walk the whole way!  Needless to say, we caught the train home.

Having hiked those 4.5 km up rue de la Republic to boulevard de Ménilmontant, I needed a coffee before tackling the 44 hectares of cobblestones and tree-roots of the old cemetry.  

For those of you who have been asking about prices - an espresso and a small beer cost 7€ ($8.83) at 3pm.

A small beer (300ml) and a large beer (500 ml) cost 12.50€ ($15.80) at 6pm - at the same cafe.

Fortified by my coffee (2.30€ or $2.91) we entered the cemetery through a side gate.  

"The cemetery takes its name from the confessor to Louis XIV, Père François de la Chaise (1624–1709), who lived in the Jesuit house rebuilt in 1682 on the site of the chapel. The property, situated on the hillside from which the king watched skirmishing, was bought by the city in 1804." Wikipedia.

Paul joined the throng trying to work out where the graves of the 250 or so famous people were.  After 5 minutes and despite notes on his iPhone, he gave up. It wasn't until we were leaving that we thought there might just be a phone app and of course there was.  But it cost the same as a map ..... and we weren't going to buy a map because we already have one.  We bought it in 1998 and it is at home in Geelong in a drawer.  And you can be sure that it is the same map as they are selling today for 3.50€.  

The only flat road/path is this one along the wall on the main road

Like all old cemeteries, this one is on a hill, so most roads and paths go upwards.

From the early 1800s until the the 1930s, most grave sites were narrow and tall.

But not all.  Some were broad as well as tall.

Some sites have had the stone removed to make way for a new grave.  Paul is of the view that someone somewhere is paying an annual fee for every site in this cemetery and when the payments stop, a plot can be resold to another family. Via the proper processes of course. Almost every site is a family plot.  Very few are the graves of individuals.

And when some work needs to be done - it is a pretty tight space in which to operate.

As in any cemetry, the oldest graves are to be found on the highest ground.

A lot of the oldest graves would have given way to these buildings (chapels and crematorium) built in the early 20th C.  This is still very much a "working" cemetery.

Great views.

And as everywhere else in Paris this month, tulips everywhere.

Including this child's grave.  They are real - not artificial.

Looking upwards from a lower path.

And here it is - Jim Morrison's grave.  Looking much worse than it did in 1998 and now completely fenced off.

View from the side.  I would have thought that his estate would have contributed to maintenance and upkeep, given the hundreds of visitors the grave attracts every day.  The surrounding monuments have taken a beating too.

The main gate of the cemetry and the road inside that is often used in movies. 

And a walk back to the Metro for a train ride home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Père_Lachaise_Cemetery