Gertrude Stein
Buried here · 1946
Buried in division 94 after her death in July 1946; Alice B. Toklas was buried beside her two decades later.
Père-Lachaise Cemetery
Still standing
Walk straight in
Still the same
Paris's largest cemetery and its most famous — 43 hectares of tombs, trees, and cobbled lanes holding the graves of Édith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Frédéric Chopin, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, and Amedeo Modigliani.
- 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris
- 1804–present
Illustration
The place, briefly
Père-Lachaise opened in 1804 as the Cimetière de l'Est, a landscaped garden cemetery laid out by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart on a hill east of the city, built to replace the overflowing, unsanitary parish graveyards of old Paris. The name came with the ground: the hill had been the country retreat of Père François de La Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV. Fashionable Paris at first wanted nothing to do with a burial ground so far from town, so in 1817 the administration staged one of history's great acts of cemetery marketing — transferring the supposed remains of Molière and La Fontaine, and of the medieval lovers Héloïse and Abélard, to the new ground. It worked. To be buried at Père-Lachaise became a Parisian ambition, and the hill filled with the century's names.
Two hundred years on, it is an open-air pantheon: some 70,000 tombs on 43 hectares — the largest green space inside Paris — visited by more than three million people a year, which by most reckonings makes it the most visited cemetery in the world. The roll call runs from Balzac (division 48) and Chopin (division 11) to Proust (division 85), Colette, Sarah Bernhardt, and Eugène Delacroix; to Oscar Wilde's winged sphinx by Jacob Epstein in division 89; to Jim Morrison in division 6, whose modest grave has needed a crowd barrier for decades.
Our own people are scattered across the hill. Guillaume Apollinaire was buried in division 86 in November 1918, dead of influenza in the war's last days. Amedeo Modigliani was carried up in January 1920, and lies in division 96 beside Jeanne Hébuterne, whose remains were brought to join him years later. Gertrude Stein was buried in division 94 in 1946, and Alice B. Toklas joined her in the same grave in 1967 — the rue de Fleurus household reunited under one stone. And Édith Piaf lies in the Gassion family grave in division 97, in the east-end quarter of the city that raised her.
The cemetery is also a site of harder memory. Against its south-eastern wall — the Mur des Fédérés — the French army shot 147 men, women, and children in the final hours of the Paris Commune on 28 May 1871, and the wall remains a place of pilgrimage for the French left. France's first crematorium opened here in 1887, its first columbarium two years later. It is still a working cemetery: steep, cobbled, easy to get lost in, and worth a whole morning with the official map in hand.
Famous graves at Père-Lachaise Cemetery
Oscar Wilde
Playwright and wit, died in exile in a Paris hotel
Division 89
Marcel Proust
In Search of Lost Time
Division 85
Honoré de Balzac
La Comédie humaine
Division 48
Colette
Novelist — Chéri, Gigi; first French woman of letters given a state funeral
Division 4
Writer and collector — the salon at 27 rue de Fleurus
Division 94
Writer, cook, and Stein's partner of four decades
Division 94
Poet of Alcools and Calligrammes; named both cubism and surrealism
Division 86
Richard Wright
Native Son and Black Boy, written into Paris exile
Division 87
Molière
France's great comic playwright
Division 25
Jean de La Fontaine
The Fables
Division 25
Héloïse and Abélard
The medieval lovers and letter-writers
Division 7
Eugène Delacroix
Liberty Leading the People
Division 49
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
The great draughtsman of French classicism
Division 23
Théodore Géricault
The Raft of the Medusa
Division 12
Camille Pissarro
Impressionism's patriarch
Division 7
Georges Seurat
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, dead at thirty-one
Division 66
Montparnasse's mournful portraitist
Division 96
Max Ernst
Surrealist painter and collagist
Division 87
Frédéric Chopin
The piano's poet, dead in Paris at thirty-nine
Division 11
France's great popular voice
Division 97
Jim Morrison
Singer of The Doors, dead in a Marais apartment at twenty-seven
Division 6
Gioachino Rossini
The Barber of Seville
Division 4
Georges Bizet
Carmen — he died believing it a failure
Division 68
Maria Callas
The century's defining operatic soprano
Division 87
Sarah Bernhardt
The Divine Sarah — the first international stage star
Division 44
Yves Montand
Singer and actor
Division 44
Simone Signoret
Actor — the first French winner of a Best Actress Oscar
Division 44
Cinema's first magician — A Trip to the Moon
Division 64
Marcel Marceau
Bip the clown; the century's great mime
Division 21
Isadora Duncan
Barefoot revolutionary of modern dance
Division 87
Victor Noir
Journalist shot by Napoleon's cousin at twenty-one; his funeral drew 100,000
Division 92
Key facts
- 1804, as the Cimetière de l'Est — laid out by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart
- Père François de La Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV, whose retreat stood on the hill
- 43 hectares and some 70,000 tombs — the largest green space inside Paris
- Piaf, Wilde, Morrison, Chopin, Proust, Balzac, Colette, Stein, Modigliani, Apollinaire
- More than three million a year — widely called the world's most visited cemetery
- Free, open daily; Métro Père Lachaise (lines 2, 3), Philippe Auguste (2), or Gambetta (3)
Documentary photographs
In images
Timeline
The Cimetière de l'Est opens on the old La Chaise estate, a landscaped garden cemetery by Brongniart replacing the city's unsanitary parish graveyards.
The remains of Molière and La Fontaine — and of Héloïse and Abélard — are transferred to the unfashionable new cemetery. Paris follows.
28 May: 147 men, women, and children of the Paris Commune are shot against the cemetery's wall, since known as the Mur des Fédérés.
France's first crematorium opens here; its first columbarium follows in 1889.
Guillaume Apollinaire is buried in division 86, dead of influenza in the last days of the war.
Amedeo Modigliani is buried in division 96. Jeanne Hébuterne's remains are later transferred to the grave beside him.
Gertrude Stein is buried in division 94; Alice B. Toklas joins her in the same grave in 1967.
Édith Piaf is buried in the Gassion family grave in division 97.
Jim Morrison is buried in division 6; his grave becomes the most sought-out address on the hill.
A self-guided route
Main entrance, boulevard de Ménilmontant
Pick up your bearings — and ideally the official map — at the porte principale, opposite the rue de la Roquette. The hill climbs east; the route below climbs with it.
Colette and Rossini — division 4
Just inside the entrance, on the broad avenue to the left: Colette under fresh flowers, and behind her the tomb Rossini rested in before his remains left for Florence in 1887.
Héloïse and Abélard — division 7
The neo-Gothic canopy near the boulevard wall shelters the cemetery's oldest residents, reunited by the 1817 transfer that made Père-Lachaise fashionable.
Jim Morrison — division 6
A few paths in, follow the visitors: the cemetery's most hunted grave sits fenced behind its neighbors, usually ringed with flowers, notes, and Métro tickets.
Frédéric Chopin — division 11
Uphill on the chemin Denon, Clésinger's muse Euterpe mourns over her broken lyre. His heart, famously, is in Warsaw.
Molière and La Fontaine — division 25
Side by side in matching sarcophagi since 1817 — the cemetery's founding publicity stunt, and still two of its most visited names.
Balzac and Delacroix — divisions 48–49
Cross the cemetery's central heights: Balzac under his David d'Angers bronze, and a few steps on, Delacroix's plain dark sarcophagus.
Marcel Proust — division 85
On the flatter upper ground, a low black marble slab that readers leave pebbles and Métro tickets on.
Guillaume Apollinaire — division 86
A rough granite menhir carved with a heart-shaped calligramme, a few paths from Proust.
The columbarium — division 87
France's first crematorium, built in 1887, and the columbarium niches that hold or commemorate Maria Callas, Isadora Duncan, Max Ernst, and Richard Wright.
Oscar Wilde — division 89
Epstein's winged sphinx, glassed in against lipstick, at the cemetery's far eastern corner.
Victor Noir — division 92
The fallen bronze journalist whose legend makes visitors reach over the fence; note what a century of superstition has polished.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas — division 94
One modest headstone for the household of 27 rue de Fleurus.
Amedeo Modigliani — division 96
Beside Jeanne Hébuterne, under a stone that calls death his moment of glory.
Édith Piaf — division 97
The Gassion family grave, in the corner of the cemetery nearest the streets that raised her.
Mur des Fédérés
End at the south-eastern wall where 147 Communards were shot on 28 May 1871 — the cemetery's most solemn ground, steps from Piaf. Exit downhill through the porte de la Réunion or back the way you came.
Questions before you go
Who are the notable people buried in Père-Lachaise?
Édith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, Marcel Proust, Honoré de Balzac, Colette, Gertrude Stein, Amedeo Modigliani, Sarah Bernhardt, Maria Callas, and Molière, among many others. The directory above lists the graves most visitors come for, with verified division numbers.
Where is Jim Morrison's grave in Père-Lachaise?
In division 6, in the older western part of the cemetery, a short walk uphill from the main boulevard de Ménilmontant entrance. The grave itself is modest — a flat stone close to the ground, usually heaped with flowers, notes, and cigarettes — and a metal barrier has enclosed it for years to hold back the crowds and the graffiti. The Greek inscription, ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ, is usually translated “true to his own spirit.” The Doors singer died in a Marais apartment in 1971, at twenty-seven.
How many people are buried in Père-Lachaise?
Estimates run from 300,000 to about a million across two centuries of burials, in some 70,000 tombs on the cemetery's 43 hectares. It is still an active cemetery, and Parisians are buried here every week.
Do you need tickets to visit Père-Lachaise?
No. Père-Lachaise is a public municipal cemetery: entry is free, and no ticket or reservation is required. Paid guided tours exist, but they are optional — you can walk in and explore on your own.
When is Père-Lachaise open?
Every day of the year. From mid-March to early November: 8:00–18:00 on weekdays, from 8:30 on Saturdays, and from 9:00 on Sundays and holidays; in winter the cemetery closes at 17:30. Last entry is fifteen minutes before closing. (Hours per the Ville de Paris, verified July 2026.)
How long does a visit take?
Plan on two to three hours to see the famous graves at a walking pace — the walking route above covers the hill in roughly that time. Committed wanderers can fill half a day; the cemetery covers 43 hectares of steep, winding paths.
Which entrance should you use?
The main entrance is on the boulevard de Ménilmontant (Métro Père Lachaise or Philippe Auguste, line 2). A second gate sits at 16 rue du Repos, and an upper entrance near Métro Gambetta lets you start at the top of the hill by Oscar Wilde's tomb and walk down instead of up.
Is Père-Lachaise accessible?
Only partly. The cemetery climbs a real hill on cobbled, often uneven lanes — comfortable shoes matter, and wheels of any kind will find the older sections hard going. The paved main avenues near the boulevard de Ménilmontant entrance are the most manageable ground. It is also an active cemetery: funerals take precedence, and quiet is expected.
Writers buried here
Alice B. Toklas
Buried here · 1967
Buried in 1967 in the same division-94 grave as Gertrude Stein — the rue de Fleurus household reunited under one stone.
Anna Karina
Buried here · 2019
Buried in Père-Lachaise after her death in Paris in December 2019, in the cemetery that also holds Gertrude Stein and, in the popular imagination, Jim Morrison.
Colette
Buried here · 1954
After national funeral honours in the Palais-Royal courtyard, Colette was buried at Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
Richard Wright
Buried here · 1960
Wright died in a Paris clinic on 28 November 1960. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Père Lachaise.
Remy de Gourmont
Buried here · 1915
Buried after his death on 27 September 1915, in the same grave as Berthe de Courrière, who had lived with him since 1886 and died the following year.
Oscar Wilde
Buried here · 1909
Oscar Wilde died in Paris in 1900 and was first buried at Bagneux Cemetery. His remains were transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1909. Jacob Epstein's monument was installed over the grave in division 89.
Artists buried here
Guillaume Apollinaire
Buried in division 86 in November 1918, dead of influenza in the war's last days — the first of the people in these pages to reach the hill.
Amedeo Modigliani
Buried in division 96 in January 1920; the remains of his partner Jeanne Hébuterne were later transferred to lie beside him.
Georges Méliès
Buried in division 64 in January 1938 — cinema's first magician, a decade after the Gare Montparnasse toy stand and the rediscovery that restored his name.
Within walking distance
The Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.