Montmartre Cemetery

I’ve never had any particular fondness or aversion to cemeteries in the US – they have always been places you go for funerals and that’s it. Not anywhere I want to spend any time in. The Montmartre Cemetery is very different. Even though part of it is under the bridge of a very busy street, it is amazingly quiet and peaceful in the cemetery. It’s very green and quite beautiful – not dead and slightly creepy like cemeteries in the US. The day I was there, there were several people just sitting on the benches reading. It seemed like a wonderful, calm place, away from the hubbub of the city.

Note the bridge running along top

There were many elaborate and huge graves, like this one:

Some of the more recent ones had tons of flowers on them. Here is an especially fragrant one:

Many famous artists, writers, and musicians are buried here and so I brought along a map that showed where their graves are located. First stop was Nadia Boulanger’s grave (which I didn’t actually find on this trip, but which Ben and I succeeded in finding when we went back later):

Nadia Boulanger was a composer, but she’s best known as a composition teacher. The list of composers who came to Paris to study with her is huge, and the list of Americans includes Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Elliott Carter, and Virgil Thompson.

One of the most famous inhabitants of the cemetery is Berlioz. Here is his grave:

I was surprised at how modern it was, but then I read the inscription on the side saying his grave had been redone in 1970. The other side bears this inscription:

"Here lies Harriet Smithson and Marie Recio"

Do you know who Harriet Smithson was? She was the woman who inspired him to write his first great masterpiece, Symphonie Fantastique, who later became his first wife. If you don’t know the story of Symphonie Fantastique, you can read it here.

Near to Berlioz is Jolivet, another French composer, and also Heinrich Heine. I was surprised that he was buried here since he’s German. He’s one of my favorite poets, so that was a nice surprise. A little ways down from Heine is another famous writer: Alexandre Dumas. His grave is quite large:

Down the steps from Dumas is one of my favorite graves in the cemetery, that of Nijinksy, the famous dancer and choreographer. He is most famous (among musicians) for having danced the role of Petrouchka in Stravinsky’s famous ballet, as well as choreographing the notorious dancing in the Rite of Spring. Petrouchka sits on his grave:

 Offenbach is also buried here, no longer able to dance the can-can:

Close to him is Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone and bass clarinet, as Ben would like me to point out:

Adolphe Sax plaque on the side of his grave

Sax Family grave

Just around the bend from him is Degas, buried in a family grave (note the spelling of the name) with the famous artist’s face on the door:

Next to Degas is one of the more ornate burial sites in the cemetery, belonging to some Russian princess:

Fancy!

 

In addition to the famous people buried here, there are also a number of interesting graves. Here is one with a man sitting on top who someone has given a flower to wear:

From this grave, you can look down on the most colorful grave I’ve ever seen:

Here it is more close up:

The words are very hard to read, but it belongs to someone buried in 2004.

Many of the graves are family plots and many people are buried in one place. This one had the longest list of names that I saw:

Here are some other pictures to give you a sense of the beautiful, tranquil, green atmosphere in the cemetery:

 

If you take a trip to Paris, I highly recommend taking some time out to spend some time in one of the many cemeteries. Quite the opposite of being depressing, it will recharge your batteries and give you renewed energy during a long day of sightseeing!