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Cemeteries The Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise is a very large cemetery park in the form of an open air garden. Over 1 million people are buried there including many famous people. The grave of rock star Jim Morrison from the Doors who died of a drug overdose in Paris in 1971 is fenced off from the public but that does not stop people disregarding this barrier to place numerous flowers on it. The famous French singer, Edith Piaf, has a tomb decorated with her pictures and planted flowers around it. The grave of Oscar Wilde is as interesting as he was a person being an almost 2m high concrete block with a lifesize sculpture of a naked man (who is missing one of his key pieces of manlihood stolen over the years). It is covered with lipstick kisses as a tribute to Oscar's works and lifestyle. Other buried there include Chopin, Colette and Marcel Proust. Another interesting cemetery to wander through is the Cimetiere de Montmartre which contains the graves of many famous writers, composers, painters, musicians/dancers etc who all lived and/or worked in the artist area during their lives. These included Offenbach, who is responsible for writing the score of the opera used later for dancing to the can can; Edgar Degas, the famous impressionist painter; 'La Goulue' Louise Weber, the popular can can dancer often featured in Toulouse-Lautrec's works; Adolphe Sax, musician who invented the saxaphone and influencial French writer of the 18th century, Emile Zola. Return to places to see Paris. |
