Virtual Tour of Pere Lachaise

Located in the 20th arrondissement, Père-Lachaise Cemetery is thought to be the most visited cemetery in the world, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to the graves of the those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is also the location of five Great War memorials.

Père-Lachaise Cemetery was established by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804, as a solution to the problem of overcrosding in the city’s cemeteries following the Revolution. At the time, it was far from the city center and attracted few funerals, so the city transferred the remains of La Fontaine and Moliere, and later the purported remains of legendary lovers Abelard and Heloise. The marketing strategy was successful and soon everyone was clamouring to be buried there. As a civil graveyard, as opposed to a religious one, the rich were able to erect whatever monuments took their fancy, and the grounds are full of great monoliths, private chapels and grand mausoleums.Today, the cemetery holds over 300,000 bodies.

The cemetery is divided into 97 divisions. One of the most visited graves is that of Jim Morrison, frontman for the Doors who died while living in Paris on July 3rd 1971. It is under 24-hour police guard. Another well-visited site is Oscar Wilde’s resting place, where visitors traditionaly kiss the grave with lipstick. Wilde’s grave, designed by Jacob Epstein and paid for by an anonymous admirer, was vandalized and its prominent penis was removed. Not all the interesting monuments belong to the famous, however: the biggest monument in the cemetery, an enormous tower that looms over the 48th division, was in memory of a man whose name has been lost to posterity.

Navigating through the Pere Lachaise can be confusing and finding a specific grave is no small task. Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Visit Virtuelle, solves this problem with an interactive map that marks celebrity graves, streets and cemetery divisions. There are a couple dozen small screen 360-degree panoramas on the site and you can travel from one to another via hotspots, all the while the map conveniently keeps you oriented as to what direction your travelling. Celebrity graves, marked with a cross, link to a close up photo of the grave along with a description in French.

The website was designed by Artifica Multimedia Solutions.