Opened in 1804 on a former Jesuit estate, Père Lachaise became a landscaped cemetery where winding paths, family tombs, and public memorials trace Parisian life and loss. It remains an active burial ground in the 20th arrondissement, so visits call for quiet and respect.
Quick facts
Paris opened the Cemetery of the East in 1804 on a former Jesuit estate called Mont-Louis.
Architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart designed planted processional avenues, wooded groves, and monumental crossroads for the cemetery.
The City of Paris records 147 Communards executed at the cemetery wall on 28 May 1871; the wall became a major site of remembrance.
Get directions to Père Lachaise Cemetery. Confirm the visitor entrance and current access with the venue before travelling.
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Père Lachaise is both a place of burial and one of Paris’s most revealing public landscapes. Its shaded lanes, family chapels, and crowded memorial avenue can look like a park, but funerals still take place here every day. That double purpose began with a practical urban problem: after Paris decided in 1801 to create larger cemeteries beyond its dense center, the city acquired the wooded Mont-Louis estate in January 1804 and opened the Cemetery of the East.
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