An Alive Necropolis - Conflicts and negotiations in Le Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Paris

An Alive Necropolis Conflicts and negotiations in

Le Cimetière du Père Lachaise

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Beatrice Bellavia, Divya Chand May, 2019

Located in the 20th arrondissement, on the eastern side of Paris, The Cemetery of Père Lachaise is a calm and green respite within the bustling metropolis. Despite being close to the ring-road, it can be defined as “intra-muros”. In the surrounding areas of Ménilmontant, St. Blaise and Roquette, other minor green spaces can be found and the location is well connected to the rest of the city thanks to a dense network of public transportation. It’s the biggest Parisian cemetery, with 43 hectares of green space and invaluable artistic and architectural heritage. This has enabled it to be the most visited cemetery of the world with about 3.5 million visitors each year. The space is designed to be more than a simple burial ground: a walled enclosure with 5300 trees help to keep the setting incredibly calm and isolated from the street noises; countless paths climb and descend cutting the cemetery into 97 sections. The whole space is equipped with benches, drinking fountains and toilets, which proves that this place was carefully planned not just for the dead but for the living as well.

Created back in 1804, the cemetery only started attracting people, dead and alive, in the late 19th century. An initial period of reluctance and unpopularity was promptly remedied by the city authorities by moving the remains of famous French personalities from the catacombs and older cemeteries to here. Today, more than 200 years later, Père Lachaise is especially known as the resting place for many national and international celebrities, such as Morrison, Wilde, Piaf, Colette, Chopin, Balzac and many others. These stars rest among the 70,000 (circa) graves, attracting a consistent flock of tourists. Yet, tourists are not the only category of “users” of Père Lachaise: beside the people paying their respects and the employees working, an important number of locals make use of the place as if it was a park; usually aged people who live in the residential areas around.

The varied usage of the cemetery creates a fascinating juxtaposition of official, religious and recreational functions. This perspective of leisure, in a space dedicated to the dead, is not limited to dark tourism and its morbid aspects. Even though such tourism is profusely present in Paris and encouraged with organized walks and tours; the cemetery is also a space of engagement and appropriation by the local citizens. One of the most symbolic spots of in the city, private and public space constantly overlap and interact here.

Many ramps and paths connect the various parts of the expansive cemetery.

The chapel/funerary home sits in a prominent central location of the complex.

To complement the diverse uses of this space, many facilities in and outside Père Lachaise can be found: a central conservation office, under guidance of the Mairie de Paris, is in charge of the management and conservation of the place. Here, all the bureaucratic and directional functions take place and maps are distributed to tourists. Four minor lodges are located at each entrance: the employees here control in and outflows, provide essential information and manage daily behavioural and security issues as well.

Everything that cannot be found inside Père Lachaise is located in the surroundings. The adjacent streets host restaurants and cafes with ironic names on the subject, such as “Le Purgatoire”, “Le P’tit Père”, or “Colette”.

An agglomeration of death-related businesses can also be found here like funerary services enterprises, flower shops, sculpture ateliers and marble laboratories.

Grave of Gilbert Morard, the “Father of modern French metro” and American Rockstar Jim Morrison,

All these elements within and outside the walls are a possible stop or destination of paths that differ depending on the kind of “user”. Certain spaces are more frequented than others, either in an organised or customized way. The spatial implication of these patterns is noticeable, for instance, where specific spaces are fenced off to prevent the excessive customization of the space, vandalization, inappropriate behaviours or the overaccumulation of external objects. While Morrison’s and Wilde’s graves are isolated from the public with fences and window-screens because of the excessive crowds, on certain other graves the commemoration may take eccentric forms, such as cauliflowers, pastries under spirits and metro tickets and much more.

These very curious insights follow the assumption that Père Lachaise can be considered a unique mirror of the city, reflecting its common patterns and issues. As in every urban context, the constant coincidence of public and private space and their respective functions generates conflictual dynamics, which require a process of negotiation and mediation between different actors.

A tour-guide leads a group around the cemetery, introducing them to graves of notable people and speaking about the various architectural and decorative styles on display in the tombstones.

However, it’s interesting to note that this urban and conflictual nature in the spaces of Père Lachaise was meant to be since the very beginning: the cemetery was explicitly designed in an unconventional way and was conceived to perform tasks which go far beyond the traditional funerary ones. It was planned top-down in 1803 not only to solve the health issues of the overcrowded burials in the city centre, but to symbolically affirm the Napoleonic power on the ecclesiastical institution, in full process of secularization. It thus became a site of contention between spiritual and temporal powers. With avant-garde features such as tree-lined avenues and astonishing funerary monuments, a modern grid town-format, cobbled paths and cast-iron signposts, it was supposed to seduce both an elite seeking to be recognized and remembered forever and to encourage a crowd of visitors which would have experienced feelings far from the ones aligned with Christian theology: without a concern about their faith, they would have enjoyed the beauties and the joys of life as much in the City of lights as in the one of the dead.

Reasonably, such a pleasant and carefully planned design contributes to make sense of the death as a more acceptable and disciplined phenomenon, subject to specific rules and guided by institutions. The ritualization of death, a purely socio-anthropological dynamic, here passes through a geographical codification that implicitly says a lot about the ways Parisians relate with this topic.

Displaying an immense respect for the dead, Père Lachaise forms a morbid spectacle that overlaps with the modern “vices” of a society extremely tied to ostentation. If the wealthy and the poor, celebrities and common people are buried here together in the city which claims to be the cradle of democracy (liberté, egalité, fraternité!), it is also true that some individuals seem to be more important than others and the meaning of thousands graves is reduced by the grandeur of few. The waiting list to gain a place here is never-ending and prices are extremely high. Exactly as it happens in the city, when people appropriate and give an interpretation of the space they have. Space is a driver of culture, lifestyles, habitudes and policies.

Overall, it is fair to believe that the main aim of Père Lachaise was fully achieved and maintained throughout the years up until today. Still, the sacred and profane aspects are mingling and everyday, at the same time, more than thirty funerary ceremonies are held in the Chapel, large groups of retired Chinese ladies are taking a selfie in front of the Crematorium and kids play in the not-most-appropriate spots, while some habitués observes silently the spectacular interaction between the living and the dead and then returns to enjoy his crime novel on a bench, facing the panorama of the ever-expanding city of Paris.