Pere Lachaise

Thanks for posting! Do u think it’s is worth going with two teens and a 10 year old?

This is a useful map as well:

https://www.api-site.paris.fr/paris/public/2018%2F9%2FCPLMapEN.pdf

These look to be the current hours:
https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71470/Cimetière-du-Père-Lachaise

Yes, I think your young people would find it interesting; it's a great place for taking photos!

depends on your kids, but Pere Lachaise is actually visually interesting and might be a nice outing on a nice day. absolutely need a map. We always start at the top and wander downhill and then catch the metro at the base of the hill.

" Do u think it’s is worth going with two teens and a 10 year old? " Like many places , a cemetery can be an abstract experience , the graves having no particular meaning in themselves . What will give the visit depth , will be if you acquaint the kids with some background of the people who are buried there before you go , The music of Edith Piaf , the work of Oscar Wilde , etc. , as examples . This film of " The Picture of Dorian Gray " ( 1945 ) by Oscar Wilde , https://youtu.be/jp7xAM-ZCCg The voice of Edith Piaf - https://youtu.be/kFzViYkZAz4 . Two examples , but this gives you the general drift , Happy Hunting ! PS , T am an inveterate cemetery visitor . Two other wonderful Paris cemeteries ( albeit smaller ) are Montparnasse , and Passy

“Jim Morrison is not easy to find.”

You’ve got that right, even with a map. My friend and I went there because we had some time to kill (no pun intended) before our Paris Greeter walk. We tried following the map but had no luck before we had to leave. Another day we found ourselves with some time after we returned from Versailles, so we tried again. Wandering with the map we encountered a family from Canada looking for it too. While we were talking to them I started smelling pot smoke. We followed the scent and found his grave. Whatever works I guess.

OMG Andrea, that is hilarious!

DO either print out the map Kathy linked to or save it on your tablet to access. There is a big map as you enter at the top from the Gambetta Metro stop but not dotted throughout. I had Rick's map plus the official cemetery map printed out and I still could not find some of the ones I was looking for. AND there were inaccuracies in BOTH maps.

Steven, I like the Montparnasse Cemetery as well.

We had no problem finding Morrison’s grave using a map I printed from online and marking the grave on it. We entered through the main entrance and wandered around for a couple hours. I put Père Lachaise cemetery right up there with Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires.

FWIW, my wife was fascinated by the place, I found it interesting.

I also assumed the easiest grave to find would be Jim's, with the biggest loudest crowd. Actually there was ... no one. They had fences up all around it so I guess normally it's a SRO crowd.

And don't plan to follow tradition and leave a lipstick kiss on Oscar Wilde's marker (which is pretty odd if you think about it), there are signs about how much it costs to get rid of those marks every year and who has to bear the cost.

More Paris cemetery maps here (we enjoyed Montmartre too):

https://map-of-paris.com/monuments-maps

Andrea! 😂🤣

I've been thinking about the question would teens find this interesting, and I think I'm going to say probably not. I live in LA and there are lots of bus tours of stars homes, and maps you can buy to DIY. I'm betting you have to be very careful before you start that the "stars" you are going to see are in fact people that your kids care about. I think seeing homes belonging to, say, Jack Benny or Fred Astaire or Barbara Stanwyck would be pretty cool but I'm realizing it would bore anyone under 50 to tears. I would expect the tour companies occasionally refresh their route, phasing old that era of performers and adding people like Ariana Grande or Jake Paul or younger athletes and performers. Hearing that Carol Burnett went to Hollywood High as you drive past is interesting to only certain folks.

So perhaps you should find a map or look at Rick's list, and be realistic about just how many of those names would ring any kind of bell. You have to know your audience. Even though we could tell that Pere is still an active cemetery and there were newer monuments, even those would only register with a Frenchperson.

I’ve been to Père Lachaise a number of times, with different people. My 18 year old niece loved it. I personally find cemeteries fascinating, but they're not everybody's cup of tea, I suppose....my 50 year old friend said an emphatic “no way” when I suggested it for our itinerary.

Why not show your kids a few photographs of PL, tell them a little about, and see what their reaction is?

I remember the first time we went, it was hard to find Morrison's grave as it is low-profile and really tucked back behind other monuments. It apparently once had a bust of JM, however that was stolen in the 70s. When I went in 2019, it indeed had fencing around it as well as a large group of people, some of whom {disrespectfully} thought nothing of climbing over the fence for a photo op.

Also, on my first visit, Oscar’s tomb was covered in lipstick and not surrounded by glass as it is now.

I loved visiting there (and cemeteries in general), but understand it is not everyone's cup of tea. I found several graves I thought of as significant. Morrison's grave held the least interest to me, so I didn't go see it. But Piaf, Rossini, Chopin, Haussmann, Bugatti and several monuments in the back to soldiers and civilians victims from WWII were very well worth my visit. As were several other monuments and markers to people of whom I was not familiar, but I could appreciate the monumental sculpture. I also just found the various pathways and animals I saw there very contemplative.

Your young companions, and you too, might enjoy the pet cemetery by way of contrast. It is small and quirky and devoted mostly to dogs, with graves worthy of humans. Its Morrison equivalent is the memorial to movie star Rin Tin Tin. Yes, Rinty was an immigrant, brought from France to Hollywood by a returning WW1 soldier.
The place is on the far west side of the city with a Metro stop within walking distance.
https://theearfultower.com/2021/04/19/ten-unusual-graves-at-the-paris-pet-cemetery/

I work in the funeral business and I found the cemetery to be quite interesting. Some sections the graves were put in at very odd angles with, it seems, no sense of organization at all. There are places where, if they ever have to disinter a grave, seems like it would be impossible. The cemetery is very much worth a visit. I'm so glad we went.

To find Jim Morrisons grave this is what I did. Just before we went, I watched a youtube video someone posted. They entered the gate on the Bd de Menilmontant side and as they walked, they showed the street signs in the cemetery where they turned right or left. I just wrote down the names of the streets and whether to turn right or left. It was super easy. It's a ten minute or less walk from that gate. Does anyone know why the tree at his grave is covered with chewing gum that has been chewed and stuck to it?

The gum is likely a form of memorialization , similar to the Jewish practice of leaving a stone on a grave . This article is interesting and informative - https://www.theladytravels.com/paris-cemeteries-famous-dead/

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Pere Lachaise, used the map from my RS book and headed off to the left to find pretty much everyone notable plus a lot of others that I was surprised & delighted to find, kind of like a treasure hunt. I spent a good 3 hours there and walked many areas that no one seemed interested in. There was a funeral going on in the church, and the most poignant grave was for a young woman, complete with a photo of her, that had died in the massacre at the Bataclan--I visited just a few months after that.

Visiting Pere Lachaise was a highlight of my trip to Paris. I am hoping to go back this spring and will do it again, but this time do it as part of a guided your to get more out of it.If that interests you, these tour groups stood out to me as worthy of consideration:

https://9974.partner.viator.com/tours/Paris/Paris-Pere-Lachaise-Gravestone-Walking-Tour/d479-3731GRAVES

https://www.fattiretours.com/paris/tours/pere-lachaise-walking-tour

FWIW, Viator is apparently a middleman company between you and the actual tour company. I've seen it mentioned a few times on forums that you should just go around them to the real company, which some googling should unveil.

Viator IS a 3rd party tour booking engine, owned by Trip Advisor. They charge high fees to the provider for their "service".

Definitely book directly with the tour provider and now I see on TA most of the time the tour provider is listed.

Corey Frye also has some interesting video tours of Pere Lachaise which I'd forgotten about:

From July 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPlBcffZ1EM

From 9 months ago or so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV9sJ_JLxGw

Pre-pandemic there was also an infrequent Paris Walks tour of the cemetery.

Agree: skip the Viator offerings and go to the actual tour provider if you think a tour is necessary. Personally? With a good map (links offered above) and a bit of reading up on the creation of the thing, I don't think they are a gotta-do. The 2nd poster's children are likely to care less about WHO is interred there as just wandering about the fascinating sculptures and interesting monuments in one of Paris' reknown "Cities of the Dead". Outside of some, say, in New Orleans (St. Louis Cemetery #1 predates Pere Lachaise, BTW, but is much, much smaller) they're so different than most of our burial grounds in the United States.

Just one interesting bit of history: Why a pair of famous lovers deceased since the 12th century are (supposedly) buried in a cemetery that didn't exist before 1804. One of many pieces on the subject:
https://www.worldhistory.biz/middle-ages/20538-the-final-resting-places-of-abelard-and-heloise.html