1. This is one of my favorite tombs at Père Lachaise: that of the 19th century realist writer Honoré de Balzac. Balzac’s magnum opus was a series of novels and short stories known as La Comédie humaine or “The Human Comedy” – a panorama of post-Napoleonic life in France. The characters in each individual novel live in the same universe, so sometimes the main character of one book will appear in the background of another. To keep everyone straight, Balzac had a complex system of notecards showing the life story of each character and where they intertwined. He also sustained a 50-cup-a-day coffee habit, which probably contributed to his publishing nearly 100 titles before he died at the age of 51.
Following Balzac’s short but prolific career, journalist and novelist Maurice Barrès famously said, “Raconter est devenu proprement impossible,” – to tell a story has become impossible – an idea that many French literary minds believe contributed to the 20th century fashion to shy away from attempting to tell new stories, and rather to find new ways to tell stories, prompting the surrealist, existentialist, and Oulipo movements, amongst others.
2. People sometimes find it odd that I offer guided tours in Père Lachaise cemetery – I can’t tell you how many times a local has walked up to me when I’m holding up my sign at the meeting point and questioned my sanity. Even my brother, who was in Paris for the last ten days, was a bit skeptical when my sister and I suggested spending an afternoon wandering the cemetery.
That said, it’s not like any cemetery you’ve ever seen before: with beautiful sepulchers and mausoleums – some complete with stained glass – there’s more than enough to look at.
3. The 19th century Columbarium is also the first Crematorium in all of France. It’s the centerpiece of the cemetery, which was commissioned by Napoleon I in 1804.
After the Parisian Innocents Cemetery caved in from overuse, Napoleon decided to build four large cemeteries at each of the cardinal points of Paris (Père Lachaise is the Eastern cemetery and, at 110 acres, the largest), to replace the central cemetery and get the dead out of the city. He also wanted everyone cremated before being buried to avoid the health hazard that Innocents had become, thus the imposing Crematorium.
4. Individual families are responsible for the upkeep of the tombs, some of which are several hundred years old. This means that as you reach the center of the cemetery, you’ll often see tombs in partial ruin.
5. Aside from Balzac, there are several famous residents of the cemetery, including Edith Piaf, James Morrison, and Oscar Wilde. Visitors will often leave their metro ticket as proof of their pilgrimage to an individual tomb, but some tombs inspire even more creative offerings.
At artist Modigliani’s tomb, for example, people leave pencils. And on the tomb of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, an early 19th century nutritional chemist who pioneered the extraction of sugar from sugar beets and was a vocal promoter of the potato for human consumption, people leave little spuds, often inscribed with messages like “Merci pour les frites!” (Thanks for the fries!)