Pere Lachaise cemetery

When Andrea asked me what I wanted to see in Paris, visiting Pere Lachaise cemetery was at the top of the list. I couldn't imagine going to Paris without paying respects to Jim Morrison's grave. Somebody else may have gone to remember Rene Lalique or Edith Piaf, but for me the prime motivator was Jim Morrison.  So we took the metro to the cemetery on a dreary rainy day in Paris.

There were a lot of other visitors paying their respects in the cemetery, as it is a very popular tourist attraction.  We found Jim Morrison's grave, but had to wait to view it as there was a large tour group gathered. Also in the crowd was a man performing some sort of ritualized self tattooing. When we finally got close to the headstone we realized that it was barricaded to prevent vandalism to the neighboring graves. Andrea recalls whiskey and beer bottles, joints, flowers and pictures decorating an unrestricted grave area on a previous visit. So the barricade was new, and the alcohol had been cleaned up when we visited. We paid our respects to the rock and roll icon and moved on.

Here are a few of the other individuals we remembered by visiting their graves at Pere Lachaise cemetery.  Frederic Chopin, the Polish composer and pianist whose heart is buried in Poland, but his body rests in Paris. Miguel Angel Asturias, a Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner in literature and Mayan specialist who was living in exile for expressing strong opinions against dictators. Etienne Gaspard Robertson, the Belgian physicist turned magician.  Vivant Denon, archaeologist and creator of the field of Egyptology.  Denon was also appointed the first director of the Louvre by Napoleon and has a wing of the institution named after him.

We both agreed that the most poignant burial was that of Suzon Garrigues who was killed in the terrorist attack on the Bataclan music venue in Paris.  Here grave is one of the ones pictured above.  It was meticulously kept, and a large conch shell in the corner was a collection site for metro tickets of people who had visited.  Tragic death for a 21 year old woman.  She, like all the others who died before her have their own story to tell.  We remembered all of them by visiting their graves on a rainy morning in Paris.

More soon.