Grave Goods

 


Paris is not the only city where people make pilgrimages to the resting places of the great and the good. Luxor comes to mind.

But Paris seems to have more than its fair share of "must-see" dead people who draw crowds year-in and year-out. There are of course the catacombs, the vast network of underground quarry tunnels where in the 1700s and 1800s skeletons from several overflowing Parisien cemeteries were relocated for hygienic reasons and structurally (and often touchingly) arranged. Oscar Wilde's tomb in Père Lachaise cemetery became so damaged from lipstick smooches that in 2011 officials erected a glass barrier around it. Sad old stoners still leave junk all over Jim Morrison's grave--a bust of the singer was defaced and eventually stolen by "fans" in the 1980s. And of course the Emperor Napoleon I reposes in the Dome of the Hôtel des Invalides at the bequest of King Louis-Phillipe.

That's as close as Sugar will get to any Emperor, dead or alive.

Step away from the more famous departures, though, and you begin to see a broader spectrum of French funerary art.

The family tomb of Charles Pigeon, inventor and entrepreneur, in Cimitière Montparnasse, 14th Arr. Still jotting down great product ideas.

As below, so above: nature reclaims a tomb in Cimitière du Père Lachaise, 20th Arr.

The much-caressed recumbent effigy of journalist and latter-day fertility icon Victor Noir, depicted as he fell when shot dead by Prince Pierre Bonaparte. Cimitière du Père Lachaise.

Commemorating Joseph-Martin Cabirol's invention of an advanced deep-sea diving suit and helmet in 1855. Cimitière du Père Lachaise.

The Tomb of French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher and his father, ceramicist Marc Schoelcher, Cimitière du Père Lachaise. Not sure what the skull and bat wings have to do with any of that.

View of le Chateau d'Eau de Montmartre from Cimitière Saint-Vincent, 18th Arr.

No collection of French funerary art would be complete without a last jump-scare from Cimitière du Château in Nice. Sweet dreams.

Comments

  1. Eric MendelsonApril 18, 2023 at 11:03 PM

    "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go."
    -The last words of Oscar Wilde

    ReplyDelete

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