Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

Opened in 1804 on a hill then far from the centre of Paris, the Père-Lachaise cemetery takes its name from Louis XIV's Jesuit confessor, who had a residence here. Laid out from the start as a vast landscaped garden planted with ancient trees and crossed by winding paths, it now holds more than seventy thousand graves, including those of many figures who marked history and culture, from Molière and Chopin to Édith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, whose tomb remains one of the most visited.

The Communards' Wall, where the last fighters of the Paris Commune were shot in 1871, adds a dimension of remembrance to this place, which with more than three million visitors a year is one of the most visited cemeteries in the world.

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