Le Père Lachaise Cemetery

One of the most famous cemeteries in the world, it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to the grave sites of notables such as:

Honoré de Balzac , Writer

Guillaume Apollinaire , Poet

Sarah Bernhardt , Actress

Frédéric Chopin , Composer *

Colette , Writer *

Jacques Louis David , Painter

Amedeo Modigliani , Poet

Molière , Dramatist

Édith Piaf , Singer

Marcel Proust , Writer

Oscar Wilde , Writer

Jim Morrison , American Rock and Roll Singer

Père François de La Chaise (1624 - 1709) was the confessor of Louis XIV, and lived in the Jesuit house rebuilt in 1682 on the site of the chapel. The property, situated on the side of a hill from which the king, during the Fronde, watched skirmishing between the Condé and Turenne, was bought by the city in 1804 and laid out by Brongniart, and later extended.

The first interments were those of La Fontaine and Molière, whose remains were transferred here in 1804. The monument to the tragic lovers Abélard and Héloïse was moved here in 1817, its canopy composed of fragments of the abbey of Nogent-sur-Seine.