Paris and Its Magic Graves

“Why don’t we go to the cemetery?” Cristina said, the first morning we woke up in Paris. I laughed. Was she serious? Did she want to visit a cemetery in a city where there are so many wonderful things to see? However, before I could say anything she added: “People say it is a magic place, is where the biggest artists in Europe are buried”.

She was so persistent and excited with the idea that I finally accepted and we ended up adding the Père Lachaise Cemetery to our list of “things to do”. So, in our last day in Paris, after having visited the Basilica of Montmartre, we took the train to this famous cemetery.

From the moment I walked through one of its old doors, I realized that my friend wasn’t wrong. That place was magic! We spent the whole morning wandering aimlessly among the graves delighted by their beauty. At some corners, there were maps that marked the places where the remains of some of the most important artists in the world were laid to rest. And around those maps, people that, like us, had come to visit them. I think I will never forget how I felt there.

Staying so close from those artists I have always admired, like Marcel Proust, Molière, Balzac, George Meliès, Edith Piaf or Oscar Wilde (whose grave is full of thank-you notes) made me feel so calm and moved; and, at the same time, that made me forget how far they actually are.

For this reason, since that wonderful visit to the city of lights, each time I am planning a trip, one of the first things I do is to seek who is buried in the cemetery of the city I am visiting. A habit that has led me to discover magic places that otherwise I would have never visited, like Mozart’s humble grave, located in a poor cemetery in the outskirts of Vienna.

A few days later, back in Spain, while I was reading some information about tourism in France I found out that the Père Lachaise Cemetery is the most visited necropolis in the world and one of the favorite places for tourists in Paris, after the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Centre Pompidou. And, after being there, I can say that it is not surprising!