Père Lachaise

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow.” 

–Oscar Wilde

When planning a trip to Paris, lots of ideas spring to mind for what you should do: shopping, going to cafes, visiting museums, and walking (or taking the elevator) to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Visiting a cemetery is not usually one of them.

Yet, on my second day in Paris, Claire and I ventured across the Seine to Père Lachaise, one of the world’s most famous cemeteries so that we could see the graves of some of the greatest icons to ever live. It is home to an estimated one million late citizens of the world, many of whom changed it during their time.

Père Lachaise was eerier than most cemeteries (which is saying something) with crows pecking at the moss-eaten tombstones that lined the cobblestone paths. The only thing that was missing was the thin sheet of fog descending on what was already a cool, overcast day. We made our way through the cemetery like we were window shopping, asking each other which tombstone we could see for ourselves. (“I like the headstone on that grave” “I think I would prefer one of the standing ones like that one.”)

We visited the graves of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Proust, and Balzac, all of which were littered with flowers, love letters, candles, and other esoteric objects that signified people’s enduring love for them. I stood back and admired the various legends who were buried six feet below my feet, whispering to Oscar Wilde and Balzac that I had read their works for class.

Towards the end, we found Oscar Wilde’s tombstone. It was only a tiny bit obvious which one was his, since it featured a bust of him as a sphinx (no one can say that he didn’t have style). Claire later told me that a tour guide standing nearby said that the sphinx once had a penis attached to it, but that someone stole it in the 1960s. Now his grave is encased in glass, which people have kissed while wearing lipstick. 

Spending time in an iconic cemetery brings up many strange questions, like what is worth putting on your tombstone, what kinds of people would ever visit it, and what a person would have to do in order to be remembered for something centuries after their death.

These are thoughts that, much like the one million or so bodies in Père Lachaise, will fester.

From there, Claire and I went for a stroll in a park. It made for a nice relaxing end to our day, as we admired the waterfalls and flowers. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris.

Later that evening, I met up with my aunt and uncle and my uncle’s nephew (they all also ended up being in Paris at the same time as me). Together, the four of us went to see the Eiffel Tower and grab dinner at a nearby cafe. 

The Eiffel Tower is one of the few landmarks in world history that is just a little bit bigger than you think it’s going to be in real life. After years of imagining what it would look like up close, it did not disappoint. It shimmers on the hour every hour for five minutes and I was able to see the glittering tower just as it changed. Child Raquel was squealing on the inside.

We didn’t go up it. We just admired it from afar.

After checking out the Eiffel Tower, we had dinner together and then we called it a night.

I scratched off several things from my Paris itinerary in a single day: the graves of beloved icons and the Eiffel Tower. I was ready to see what my next day in Paris had in store for me.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel