Travel bucket list idea:
Paris, Ile-de-France, France
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Pere Lachaise is the world’s most visited cemetery – hundreds of thousands of tourists come here annually to see the final resting places of France’s most flamboyant figures from the past 200 years.
Famous residents include painters Delacroix, Gericault and Ingres, writers Moliere, Balzac and Colette, composer Chopin, singers Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison, and the incomparable Oscar Wilde.
This sprawling 44-hectare park is also a feast of sculpture, with more than 69,000 ornate and ostentatious tombs. Fascinating and bizarrely enjoyable.
The area is hilly, so it’s best to take the metro to Gambetta (near the tomb of Oscar Wilde), then walk downhill through the rest of the cemetery. Return via the Philippe Auguste metro station next to the main entrance, or Pere Lachaise metro station, 500m away.
A free map is available at the main entrance and better maps are available from vendors just outside the gates. You can also download a map (in French, but the famous names are obvious) from the main Paris website.
Wear comfortable shoes for navigating the cobbled pathways.
The cemetery is open all year round, seven days a week.
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