Père Lachaise Cemetery

One of my most recents habits when traveling is visiting their famous cemeteries. I know it sounds a little bit creepy but to me, I’ve always been fascinated by what a cemetery represents. When you think about funerals, annual gatherings for the dead and cemeteries as well, they’re just as much for the living, as they are for the dead. If not more so for the ones who were left behind.

When I’m traveling, I want to know about the people who created that city, and also what those people mean to the people of today, and what better way to feel this other than a cemetery?

In Paris, I visited a beautiful cemetery called Père Lachaise Cemetery. Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Paris with over one million passed lives buried.

Out of the 1 million bodies, there were famous people buried as well starting with Musicians such as Frederic Chopin, a Polish composer from the 1800s as well as Jim Morrison, an American rock artist. Other artists such as Oscar Wilde lie here as well.

Frédéric Chopin

Jim Morrison

This is Jim Morrison's grave.
For him, he has too much of a following that he had a barricade around his. Apparently fans came here to smoke pot or have sex on the grave (people are into that).

The cemetery was such a peaceful and quiet place.
How could a place with so many dead bodies be both so haunting yet so beautiful? It was like a place to celebrate their legacy.

Amongst the graves, I found a beautiful young girl's picture. The grave read November 2015. It was one of the victims from the terrorist attack in Paris.
It was just conflicting and confusing to realize that all of these people, Chopin, Jim Morrison, an old politician from the 1800s and this young girl who just recently passed away, were all in the same "place" right now.
Then again, I guess we all will.

Until we do though, until we enter our eternal sleep, we just got to make every second count.

December 7, 2019