Père-Lachaise: the famous graves under the chestnuts
Chopin, Wilde, Morrison and Piaf, the cobbled avenues, and the wall where the Commune ended. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Frédéric Chopin
Up the cobbled avenue from the main gate: the composer's grave, almost always banked with fresh flowers and the odd Polish flag. Take a map at the gate or download one — the numbering helps but won't save you.

2. Oscar Wilde
Jacob Epstein's winged modernist tomb, kissed so often by lipsticked admirers that it's now behind a glass screen. The kisses moved to the glass. Wilde would have had a line for it.

3. Jim Morrison
The most-visited grave here, modest and fenced, usually with a small crowd and a guard nearby. Worth it for the pilgrimage atmosphere as much as the stone, which is plain.

4. Édith Piaf
The Belleville singer is buried in a simple black family tomb in the eastern section, near the streets where she grew up. Quieter than the others; bring nothing, leave nothing, just stand a moment.

5. Mur des Fédérés
The Communards' Wall in the far southeast corner, where the last fighters of the 1871 Commune were shot and buried in a trench. Plain brick, heavy with what happened. The most serious place in the cemetery.

6. Monument aux Morts
Bartholomé's great relief near the centre, a doorway into the dark with the living on one side and the dead on the other. Pause here on the way to the Gambetta gate at the top of the hill.

Père-Lachaise: the famous graves under the chestnuts