Wooooooowwwwwww! Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise is in eastern Paris, France. As the largest cemetery in Paris it is also the most visited, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. It is beautiful and holds the graves of many famous people, mostly but not exclusively French. The 110 acre cemetery was opened in 1804 and there are over 1 million people buried. Including the ossuary and the columbarium there are over 2 million people interred in the cemetery. Its crematorium was built in 1894. It is still an active cemetery. Plots can be bought in perpetuity, for 50, 30 or 10 years, the last being the least expensive option. There are many exquisite monuments, markers and mausoleums.
The cemetery was not too busy for a number of years after it opened. It was decided that a good marketing strategy would be to start burying famous people there. It worked. There are many well-known individuals interred at Pere Lachaise:
Moliere, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Isadora Duncan, Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Bizet, Maria Callas' empty urn, Chopin, Colette, Corot, Delacroix, Max Ernst, William Temple Franklin (Ben Franklin's grandson), Laurent Fignon, Guillotin, Abelard & Heloise, Ingres, Lalique, Marcel Marceau, Pissarro, Proust, Seurat, Simone Signoret, Alice B. Toklas, Richard Wright, etc., etc.
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Père Lachaise, Chemin Errazu
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