Père Lachaise
The Eastern cemetery
Past and present are blending in the alleys of the Père-Lachaise, the Parisian cemetery where small stories melt in with History. Walk on the path taken by famous characters and explore the wild nature of the largest Parisian park.
One of the graveyard path
Two hundred years ago, this hill to the east of Paris was still the face itself of French countryside acting as a refuge to lush prairies and abundant flora that nothing would disturb. Many years have passed since the first grave stone has been laid in the Père-Lachaise and Paris has swallowed the park only to spit it out in the heart of the city. But if all around it, the city has invaded streets, the inse od the cemetery has not changed one bit, kept away as it is from the claws of modernity and the marks of urbanism. One of the symbols of a romantic Paris collectively dreamed about, a world away from the activity and the noise of the centre, the Père-Lachaise is unique. But what does the world’s most-visited cemetery hide and what do 2 million visitors each year come to find here?
To shed some light on its success, let’s start by mentioning the fact that what you have there is in fact the biggest green space of the French capital. Its 44 hectares make it a true green lung for Parisians and a perfect Sunday walk. What’s more, what the Père-Lachaise does not share in soberness and linearity with the usual military-style French cemeteries, it shares in melancholy and peace of the atmosphere. Nature is omnipresent and up to 5300 trees of fifty different species can be found there. Cherry trees, hazelnut trees, chestnut trees and magnolias have regained the space they were due and gluttonous herbs have devoured tombs, growing freely where it seems right. In this ‘back to wilderness’ garden, moss and lichen have settled on statues alongside mint, sage and verbena which can be hand-picked. But the Père-Lachaise is not only the largest, it is also the oldest park in Paris, having appeared half a century before green spaces like Monceau or the Buttes-Chaumont were created.
Woman statute
The very concept of this cemetery is innovating in fact, in that it was an attempt to be a “garden for the dead”. This idea did not spring up suddenly but it was the specific land and imposing vegetation of the place that shaped it. It is Brongniart, an architect author of the Parisian Stock Exchange whose duty it became to draw the design of the park based on an English model, which would probably explain this wild side where nature seems to have claimed its due. First planned on 17 hectares, that part, the most romantic of the cemetery, is listed and houses 30000 graves dating from before 1900. The park will get bigger later before it reaches it final size of 44 hectares.
The beginnings of the park are quite unpopular because of the large distance which separates it from the town. In 1815, only 2000 concessions had been sold. So, one of the approach to lure Parisians who ignore the park consists in bringing famous characters in it. That is how Molière and La Fontaine’s sepulchres came to be transferred there in 1817, a decision which takes its toll and baits Parisians. Since then, the popularity of the cemetery has climbed regularly and its design has not ceased to inspire other graveyards like London’s Highgate and New Orlean’s Saint Louis n°1.
By Alice Cannet
Published : April 29, 2010
Photo credit : © APPL
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