Père Lachaise Cemetery

Père François de la Chaise—Louis XIV’s Jesuit confessor (1624–1709)—lent his name to the cemetery that opened here in 1804, when the city bought the hillside property in 1804. The site’s transformation into a public burial ground was tied to Napoleon’s reforms: in the Consulate he declared, “Every citizen has the right to be buried regardless of race or religion,” and the cemetery opened that same year. Plans were laid out by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, and the grounds were later extended. Père Lachaise became the largest cemetery in Paris—44 hectares, or about 110 acres—and, as a garden cemetery, it was also the first municipal cemetery in the city. It later gained added layers of remembrance as the location of three World War I memorials. Today, only a memorial marks this spot’s original significance, while the wider story of Père Lachaise continues nearby through the figures it continues to host and the names it keeps.

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