Père Lachaise Cemetery: A Walk Among Legends

Paris, France

100 tickets 2.3 km · about 1 hr 10 mins · 12 stops · Premium walk How Walking Tickets work

Père Lachaise is a walk through Paris’s open-air history book, where graves of writers, singers, revolutionaries, and legends tell the story of modern fame and memory. Opened in 1804 under Napoleon, it turned a cemetery into a landscaped place of public remembrance, made prestigious by the transfer of figures like Molière and Jean de La Fontaine. The route links art, politics, and grief through sites such as Rossini, Chopin, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, and the Communards’ Wall.

The stops

01
Grave of Colette
The Grave of Colette is a modest black headstone in Père Lachaise Cemetery marking the burial place of the French novelist who received a state funeral in 1954.
02
Tomb of Gioachino Rossini
The Tomb of Gioachino Rossini in Père Lachaise is a surviving cenotaph marking the composer's original burial site before his remains were moved to Florence in 1887.
03
Tomb of Baron Haussmann
The Tomb of Baron Haussmann is the green-doored Famille Haussmann vault in Père Lachaise for Napoleon the Third's prefect who reshaped Paris in the nineteenth century.
04
Tomb of Frédéric Chopin
The Tomb of Frédéric Chopin in Père Lachaise is a sculpted 1850 monument by Auguste Clésinger marking the grave of the Polish composer whose heart was returned to Warsaw.
05
Grave of Jim Morrison
The Grave of Jim Morrison is a modest fenced burial in Père Lachaise where the Doors singer, dead at twenty-seven in 1971, became one of the cemetery's most visited modern legends.
06
Tomb of Molière
The Tomb of Molière is a raised monument on pillars in Père Lachaise, transferred here in 1817 to honor the playwright of Tartuffe and Le Malade imaginaire.
07
Grave of Bernard Verlhac (Tignous)
The Grave of Bernard Verlhac, known as Tignous, is a burial in Père Lachaise for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist killed in the terrorist attack of January 2015.
08
Grave of Édith Piaf
The Grave of Édith Piaf is a frequently flower-covered family grave in Père Lachaise where the singer of La Vie en Rose was buried in 1963.
09
Mur des Fédérés (Communards' Wall)
The Mur des Fédérés is a memorial wall in Père Lachaise where 147 captured Communards were shot on 28 May 1871 during the suppression of the Paris Commune.
10
Grave of Gertrude Stein
The Grave of Gertrude Stein is a plain headstone in Père Lachaise marking the resting place of the American modernist writer and salon host, with Alice B. Toklas named on the reverse.
11
Tomb of Oscar Wilde
The Tomb of Oscar Wilde is Jacob Epstein's winged funerary monument in Père Lachaise, erected for the Irish writer who died in Paris in 1900.
12
Columbarium & Crematorium of Père Lachaise
The Columbarium and Crematorium of Père Lachaise is a Byzantine Revival funerary complex completed in 1894, housing more than 40,000 urns and associated with France's first cremation in 1889.