Paris Werewolves

  A phantasmagoric bas-relief from Robertson's tomb, Cimitière du Père Lachaise, 20th Arr. I took the opportunity to create another entry for Atlas Obscura. This one was for the tomb of 18th century scientist and pioneer of spooky stage entertainments, Étienne-Gaspard Robertson . AO wrote a great story about Robertson years ago, but did not include particulars about visiting the tomb. It's a small thing, but I wanted to rectify it. Now I have. I won't rehash everything that you can read on AO, except to say that his grave in Cimitère du Père Lachaise is a marvelous homage to the kinds of nightmares he inflicted on audiences in the darkened crypt of the Convent of the Capucines. Not your usual cherubic decor. An engraving from Robertson's memoirs. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. As it happens, one of Robertson's other claims to fame was "aerostats," i.e., he would ascend in a hydrogen-filled balloon to take detailed measurements of meteorological and atmos...

  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....