Cemetery · France · Still standing

Père Lachaise Cemetery

Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

Père Lachaise Cemetery is Paris's largest and best-known municipal cemetery, laid out from 1804 as a landscaped 'garden' burial ground and expanded through the 19th century. It contains thousands of individual tombs, family chapels, monuments, a chapel, a columbarium-crématorium, and the Communards' Wall, and remains an active cemetery and major visitor destination.

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Explore it in 1817· early garden cemetery

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons

First raised

1804

Its prime

1900

Today

Still standing

As it stood in 1900

What Père Lachaise Cemetery looked like in its prime.

A curved limestone perimeter wall with a monumental hemicylindrical neoclassical entrance of two ashlar pylons flanking a tall green double-leaf door; the pylons bear winged-hourglass medallions, garlands and Latin inscriptions. Behind the gate lie dense groves of mature trees and a network of narrow gravel paths lined with stone and bronze tombs, small neo‑Gothic chapels, and colonnaded family mausolea. The columbarium-crématorium shows a large brick-and-sandstone dome visible above the trees; forecourt paved with cobbles and low chained bollards.

Step inside

9 places to explore in 1900.

The record describes 9 distinct spots at Père Lachaise Cemetery, including 2 interiors: funerary chapel (godde), columbarium and crematorium dome. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more photos, more angles and more of the immersive experience.

Main entrance on Boulevard de MénilmontantFunerary chapel (Godde)Mur des Fédérés (Communards' Wall)Monument aux Morts and ossuaryColumbarium and crematorium domeWinding tree-lined avenues and tombsAbélard and Héloïse mausoleumGreffulhe family neo-Gothic tombJewish enclosure (division 7)

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