Père-Lachaise is the most-visited cemetery on earth, and it earns it: forty-four hectares of cobbled avenues climbing a hill under old chestnuts, with the famous dead scattered through it like a reading list. Chopin and Wilde, Morrison and Piaf, and in the corner the wall where the Commune ended in 1871.
Three kilometres of slopes and cobbles; wear proper shoes. Take a map at the main gate — the numbered divisions help but the place is a maze, and getting briefly lost is half of it. Up first to Chopin, banked with flowers, then across to Oscar Wilde's winged tomb, now glassed off because of the lipstick.
Jim Morrison's plain stone draws the biggest crowd; Édith Piaf's black family tomb, near her Belleville, draws the quietest. Then climb to the southeast corner and the Mur des Fédérés — plain brick, where the last Communards were shot. Stand a moment; it's the gravest place here.
Leave by the upper gate at Gambetta, the city below you and the chestnuts behind.
