Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [269]
Père-Lachaise
The reason for my first visit to the Père-Lachaise cemetery was no different from that of many other American college students: to see Jim Morrison’s grave. I owned only one album by the Doors (The Soft Parade), so I didn’t even consider myself a proper fan, but it seemed like the thing to do—and anyway, the wine that was offered to me by a group gathered there was better than the plonk I bought at Félix Potin. Only later did I learn that so many other famous people were interred here, and that, taken together, they represented a broad cross section of French personalities. But Père-Lachaise, one of the world’s largest cemeteries, is even more than that, as Alistair Horne notes in Seven Ages of Paris: “It contains probably more of France’s past than any other forty-four hectares of her soil.… In it resides a whole history of Paris, indeed of France herself, in marble and stone.” Catharine Reynolds, writing in Gourmet, observed that the cemetery “evokes civilisation française—for citizen and foreigner alike.” Whenever I recommend Père-Lachaise to visitors, they always thank me, reporting that it was the surprise of their trip, and some say it was their favorite site in all of Paris.
In addition to the many famous names of the deceased—you’ll find them all (except for Baron Haussmann; see this page) on the map you can buy at the entrance—within Père-Lachaise are a few other spots of note. The Mur des Fédérés is a wall in the eastern corner where 147 Communards were lined up and shot during La Commune. The monuments honoring the victims of Nazi persecution are the most moving memorials I’ve ever seen, anywhere (my friend Sarah and I came across one that was simply footprints leading into a large, dark stone structure, and we were reduced to tears). There’s also the tombstone of Victor Noir. I first saw a photo of Noir’s unusual grave in John Berger’s Keeping a Rendezvous, and I was so intrigued I had to go and take a look at it myself. The story goes that in 1879 Prince Pierre Bonaparte, cousin to Napoléon III, wrote an article in a reactionary Corsican journal that criticized La Revanche, a radical Paris newspaper. The editor of La Revanche sent Noir and another journalist to Corsica to seek an apology, but Prince Bonaparte shot Noir instead. The grave portrays Noir, just twenty-two, dead on the ground moments after he was shot. (As an aside, the groin area of the bronze work is a little enlarged, and has received an abundance of indecent rubbing by female visitors.)
In recommending Père-Lachaise (boulevard de Ménilmontant and avenue Gambetta, 20ème / pere-lachaise.com) so highly, I do not mean to slight Paris’s two other famous cemeteries, Montmartre (avenue Rachel, 18ème) and Montparnasse (boulevard Edgar-Quinet, 14ème), each worthy of a detour as well. Among those buried at Montmartre are Degas, Jacques Offenbach, Vaslav Nijinsky, François Truffaut, and Stendhal, and within the grounds of Montparnasse are Brancusi, Baudelaire, Brassaï, Jean Seberg, Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Readers who want to discover more will be happy to have a copy of Permanent Parisians: An Illustrated, Biographical Guide to the Cemeteries of Paris by Judi Culbertson and Tom Randall (Walker, 1996). This is a fascinating read, even if you don’t have any desire to walk among tombstones; in addition to the three big cemeteries it also includes Les Invalides, the Panthéon, Saint-Denis, and others.
Point Zéro
The point zéro milestone set in the parvis of Notre-Dame is the point from which all distances in France are measured. Legend has it that if you stand on the point zéro plaque, your return to Paris is assured. I’ve never wanted to take any chances about that,