Père Lachaise Cemetery
A million souls rest here, and the neighbors are Chopin, Piaf, Wilde and Jim Morrison.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Paris offline.
Administrators made it fashionable in 1817 by reburying Molière and La Fontaine with fanfare; the ploy worked, and its graves now include Chopin, Proust, Balzac, Piaf, Wilde and Morrison. Brongniart designed it like an English garden, so you wander wooded, uneven paths rather than straight rows of headstones.
What to look for
- Héloïse and Abélard's tomb, its stone canopy built from fragments of the abbey at Nogent-sur-Seine
- The Mur des Fédérés, where 147 Communards were shot in 1871 during the Semaine sanglante
- Grounds that double as a biodiversity preserve: orchids, foxes and tawny owls among ~100 bird species
Enter via Métro Père Lachaise or Philippe Auguste (20th arr.). At 44 hectares, grab a map before hunting a specific grave.
Père Lachaise Cemetery is one of 33 sights worth the detour in Paris, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Paris pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Paris
- Eiffel TowerThe 300-metre iron tower Parisian artists petitioned against before it was even finished.
- Louvre MuseumThe world's most-visited museum lives inside a 12th-century fortress that became a royal palace.
- Notre-Dame de ParisThe spire fell on live TV in April 2019; since December 2024 you can walk back inside.
- Musée d'OrsayVan Gogh and Monet hung inside a Beaux-Arts station built for the Paris–Orléans railway.
- Champs-ÉlyséesA single 1.9-km straight line runs from the Concorde obelisk to the Arc de Triomphe — Paris's ceremonial spine on the Axe historique.
- Place de la BastilleThe prison that lit a revolution is gone — and the mob that stormed it on 14 July 1789 came for gunpowder, not the seven forgotten men inside.