Description of the attraction
The cemetery of Montmartre was opened after the authorities of Paris 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 the level of the streets (now part of Callencourt street passes a viaduct directly above it). Limestone was once mined here, and during the revolution and the Paris Commune, the dead 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 occupies 11 hectares and has its own streets and avenues. It is not clear why, but cats have chosen him, 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 Adolphe 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 it was here, next to his mother and stepfather, that the architect Auguste Montferrand, the builder of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, was buried. 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.
In the cemetery of Montmartre, both the muse of Toulouse-Lautrec, the "queen of the Cancan" Louise Weber, and the beloved of Dumas-son, the famous courtesan Marie Duplessis, the prototype of Marguerite Gaultier from his novel "The Lady of the Camellias", found their last refuge. It is simply impossible to list the names of all the celebrities buried here.
