Cemetery Montmartre (Cimetiere de Montmartre) description and photos - France: Paris (Topic)

Montmartre Cemetery (Cimetiere de Montmartre) description and photos - France: Paris. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The title in English is Cimetiere de Montmartre.

Photo and description

The Montmartre Cemetery was opened after the Paris authorities banned burial within the city. At the beginning of the 19th century, four new cemeteries were opened around Paris at once: Passy in the west, Pere Lachaise in the east, Montparnasse in the south and Montmartre in the north.

The cemetery was located on the site of a former quarry, below street level (now part Rue Caulaincourt is a viaduct directly above it). Limestone was once mined here, and during the revolution and the Paris Commune, the murdered were buried in mass graves.

This resting place of many celebrities who lived and worked in Montmartre is popular with tourists. At the entrance, you can take a free plan so as not to get lost among 20,000 old crypts and new burials (up to 500 graves appear in the cemetery per year). The cemetery covers 11 hectares, it has its own streets and avenues. It is not clear why, but cats have chosen it, dozens of them are walking around the territory.

The most visited grave is the national favorite of the singer Dalida. Here, at her full-length gilded monument, it is always full of fresh flowers. Also buried in the cemetery are composers Adolphe Adam, Jacques Offenbach, Hector Berlioz, the inventor of the saxophone Adolph Sax, scientists Andre-Marie Ampere and Jean Foucault, dancers Vaclav Nijinsky, Lyudmila Cherina, Auguste Vestry, artists Edgar Degas, Gustave Moreau, Francis Teofilbo, writers Gaultier, Heinrich Heine, Alexander Dumas-son, Stendhal, the Goncourt brothers. There is a cenotaph (empty grave) of Emile Zola in the cemetery - his ashes were moved from here to the Pantheon.

It is believed that the architect Auguste Montferrand is buried here, next to his mother and stepfather, the builder of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. He himself wanted to lie under his cathedral, but Emperor Alexander II did not allow - Montferrand was a Catholic. He was buried in the Catholic Church of St. Catherine on Nevsky Prospekt, the funeral cortege carried the coffin around St. Isaac's Cathedral three times, after which the body of the architect was taken to France.

The muse of Toulouse-Lautrec, the "queen of the Cancan" Louise Weber, and her beloved Dumas, the son of the famous courtesan Marie Duplessis, the prototype of Marguerite Gaultier from his novel The Lady of the Camellias. It is simply impossible to list the names of all the celebrities buried here.

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Topic: Cemetery Montmartre (Cimetiere de Montmartre) description and photos - France: Paris.