The world’s most visited graveyard, it opened in 1804 and out of 800.000 people buried here, there are 69,000 ornate, often ostentatious tombs in a 44-hectare open-air sculpture garden.
Some of the famous buried here are Chopin, the playwright Moliere, the poet Aploinarire, the Writers Balzac, Proust, Gertrude Stein and Colette, the actors Simone Signoret, Sarah Bernhardt and Yves Montand, the painters Pissarro, Seurat, Modigliani and Delacroix, the Chanteuse Edith Piaf, the dancer Isadora Duncan and even those immortal 12th century lovers, Abelard and Heloise, whose remains were disinterred and reburied here together in 1817 beneath a neo-Gothic tombstone.
Chopin
Particularly frequented graves are those of Oscar Wilde (division 89 in 1900)
and Jim Morrison of the Doors, who died in an apartment at 17-19 rue Beautreillis 4e, in the Marais in 1971 and is buried in division 6.
Pere Lachaise has five entrances. Maps are available in the conservation office in the SW corner of the cemetery.