Page 244 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Paris

242  P ARIS AREA B Y AREA

q Cimetière du Père Lachaise

Paris’s most prestigious cemetery is set on a
wooded hill overlooking the city. The land
was once owned by Père de la Chaise, Louis
XIV’s confessor, but it was bought in 1803 by
order of Napoleon to create a new cemetery.
Père Lachaise, the first cemetery in France
with a crematorium, became so popular that
it was expanded six times during the century.
It now contains over 70,000 graves, including
those of the writer Honoré de Balzac, the The Columbarium was built at the end of the 19th
century. The American dancer Isadora Duncan is one
composer Frédéric Chopin, the singer Jim of the many celebrities whose ashes are housed here.
Morrison and the actor Yves Montand. These,
along with striking funerary sculpture, make
Père Lachaise a pleasant place for a stroll.

. Simone Signoret and AVE TRANSVERSALE
Yves Montand AVE AGUADO
France’s most famous post-war
cinema couple were renowned
for their left-wing views and AVE CIRCULAIRE AVE DES THUYAS AVE TRANSVERSALE NO.2
long turbulent relationship.
KEY AVE DES A NGLAIS
1 Marcel Proust brilliantly AVE TRANSVERSALE NO.1
chronicled the Belle Époque in his
novel Remembrance of Things Past.
2 Allan Kardec was the founder of
a 19th-century spiritual cult, which
still has a strong following. His tomb AVE CAIL AVE FEUILLANI AVE ST MORYS
is forever covered in pilgrims’ flowers.
3 Mur des Fédérés is the
wall against which the last AVE DE LA CHAPELLE
Communard rebels were shot by
government forces in 1871. It is
now a place of pilgrimage for
left-wing sympathizers. AVE DES PEUPLIERS
4 George Rodenbach, the
19th-century poet, is depicted as AVE CASIMIR PERIER
rising out of his tomb with a rose in AVE CIRCULAIRE
the hand of his outstretched arm.
5 Elizabeth Demidoff, a Russian AVE LAT SUD
princess who died in 1818, is AVE LAT DU NORD AVE PRINCIPALE
honoured by a three-storey Classical
temple by Quaglia.
6 The remains of Molière, the
great 17th-century actor and
dramatist, were transferred here
in 1817 to add historic glamour
to the new cemetery.
7 Frédéric Chopin, the great Polish Entrance
composer, belonged to the French
Romantic generation.
8 Monument aux Morts by
Paul Albert Bartholomé is one of Théodore Géricault
the best monumental sculptures The French Romantic
in the cemetery. It dominates painter’s masterpiece, The
the central avenue. Raft of the Medusa (see p124),
is depicted on his tomb.

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Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Starsight template “UK” LAYER
(Source v1.8)
Date 23rd July 2012
Size 125mm x 217mm