Bourgeois Paris may well have shuddered at the mention of Belleville. Even today when inner cities are being upgraded many still perceive Belleville as unappetising and remote. Not so the dead: From the start, those very proper Parisians, who when still alive had taken up residence on the opposite side of the city and would have never set foot in these accursed parts, were ready to pay astronomical prices for a share in the most prestigious cemetery in Paris, le Père Lachaise, a spectacular necropolis, basically constituting the only museum the 20th arrondissement has to show for itself. Here the last two centuries of the history of France and Paris are on display and the ghosts of Tout-Paris enjoy the setting of the largest garden in the capital — 44 hectares — rising above the world of the living to the west, on a lofty hill and that much closer to heaven...

In order to make a commercial success of the venture, the 19th-century bourgeoisie had to be persuaded to allow their remains to be transferred to the eastern edge of Paris — not yet the place of evil reputation it would become later but certainly remote. The Prefect of the Seine Frochot resorted to an astute promotional campaign which, by playing on human vanity, naturally worked: by putting up for sale in perpetuity land grant property, he was sure to arouse interest among self-engrossed Parisians, and by setting prices so high that only the upper crust could afford them, he made the new cemetery both desirable and fashionable. And when Frochot further transferred to this site the remains of glorious past celebrities — notably those of the medieval lovers Peter Abélard and Héloise and those mistaken for La Fontaine and Molière's — everyone was taken in by it, including Frochot himself, who rests in division no. 19, Brogniart, the architect of the new cemetery and of the Paris stock exchange, and Godde who built the cemetery gate. Jacques Baron, the previous owner of the grounds, paid a very high price to rest here: After having been squeezed out of his grounds for a pittance by the hard-bitten Frochot, the poor man was made to pay 300 times the amount for his own little plot of 5 square yards! Balzac, who had buried here his characters, was brought here in his turn, despite his biting account of the place and its clients:

"This is a disgusting comedy! this is once again Tout-Paris with its streets, its signs, its industries, its hôtels, but seen through the wrong end of the spyglass, a microscopic Paris, reduced to the small dimensions of shadows, of larva,  of the dead, a human race that has nothing great left but its vanity."

He must have had in mind the extravagant monuments erected for the dead in a delirium of self aggrandisement. The best artists of the day, the very same who were commissioned to embellish Paris — Percier, Fontaine, Viollet-le-Duc, Garnier, Visconti and Davioud — were now recruited to inflate the egos of the deceased and build for them bombastic mausoleums.

 
The cemetery has been extended several times since it was first acquired by Frochot in 1804 on behalf of the city of Paris. Part of the grounds belonged to a wealthy spice merchant, Régnault de Wandonne in the 15th century, who himself had bought it from the Bishop of Paris. The estate came to be known known as La Folie-Régnault because the proprietor had built there a folie (countrified residence). When the Jesuits bought it in the 17th century as a country retreat from their city dwelling on the busy rue Saint-Antoine, they renamed it Mont-Louis, in homage to the Sun King who had given the Jesuits his full support. The King had chosen his own confessor from among their ranks, the Reverend Père François d'Aix de la Chaize — hence the name Père-Lachaise given to the estate later. The Jesuits did not sustain their influence over Louis XV and were expelled from France in 1763, following which the Mont Louis was bought up by private people and fell eventually into the hands of the Baron family.

It would be impossible to list the celebrities who rest here — Frédéric Chopin, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand are some of the favourites, as well as Jim Morrison. The Anglo-Saxon community pays its respects to Oscar Wilde, some visit Isadora Duncan's grave, few Sir Richard Wallace's.

Distinguished representatives of the fine arts and science, music and dance, literature, architecture, the stage and the screen, the armed forces and politicians are gathered here under the shade of 12,000 trees, alongside more ordinary Parisians.

As befitting the orderly French, they have chosen to complete their earthly journey in the 20th arrondissement, at the end of the snail-shell-like layout of Paris, l'escargot de Paris. The streams of daily visitors (this is the sixth most visited site in the capital) enjoy recognising the original bearers of so many street names down below by stopping at their graves, thus perpetuating their memory and piecing together fragments of the history of Paris.

This is an excerpt from Thirza Vallois's Around and About Paris series (volume 3 - New Horizons: Haussmann's Annexation).     Around and About Paris (volume 1, 2 and 3) is published by Iliad Books, UK
For more information, and to order Thirza Vallois's titles, go to Link: www.thirzavallois.com

(expatica September 2008)

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