| Pere Lachaise Cemetery |
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| Written by i j |
| Monday, 31 January 2011 15:31 |
It ahs been some time since I last wrote an article about gothic tourism, well, today I bring to you a special one, sometimes we lack the presence of a close cemetery or two to take a walk, relax and rest… sometimes to rest eternally… well, I recommend you to grab a beer and listen to relaxing music (like My Friend Skeleton music which it’s perfect) and get a look to this virtual visit to…
For those that don’t know (like me, that I didn’t knew until I read it) where is this cemetery located, let’s say that this is the biggest cemetery of Paris with 48Ha, it’s not truth that this is the biggest French cemetery nor that it’s the biggest cemetery of Paris area, but this is the biggest cemetery inside the city.
What it rally is (bad thing), is one of the most famous cemeteries in the world, in deed it’s considered to be the most visited cemetery in the world attracting inside it’s walls several hundred thousand of visitors each year that comes to visit the burials of French people that lived in the last 200 years.
You know that I’m not friend of writing articles about well known stuff (if you are famous then you need me to write about you), but in this case ill do an exception for the possibility that this place offers to us, and it’s that we can take a virtual walk in it’s website.
Following the link that it’s at the end of the article you will be able to move around the cemetery street, going from one place to another and watching to a lot of 360 degrees photos.
It’s not like walking in a real cemetery… but it’s the closest I can offer from this computer.
As I said you have a link bellow to go to that virtual walk, but before I can’t help writing about some morbid stuff.
It seems that in the opening of this cemetery it was considered to be quite far from the city center, in deed too far for attracting burials… and that was the case, this cemetery only had about a dozen permanent burials until 1804 moment in which the administrators designed a strategy for attracting people.
The “happy” idea they had was to make a big party which will mainly consist in the movement of the tombs of La Fontaine and Moliere from their present burial location to the Père-Lachaise cemetery, some years later, they repeated the trick with the remains of Pierre Abèlard and Heloise, that last one had a monument in her tomb which had to be moved piece by piece.
Ok, saving that in my opinion the movement of someone remains for giving publicity to a cemetery just shouldn’t be done (long live capitalism), the fact is that the strategy succeeded (Long live humanity, that don’t want to be buried in “that” piece of grass unless there is someone famous buried there too), and soon the cemetery found itself with 33.000 people, today more than 300.000 people rest in peace forever (forever? Well at least unless we have to promote another cemetery).
After re-reading this article I feel that I haven’t said anything good about this place… it happens, well things are like they are, no need to decorate them… but what I can promise is that you will enjoy the virtual visit to this place so it’s the moment to grab your beer, listen to your favorite music and relax.
http://www.pere-lachaise.com/perelachaise.php?lang=en
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| Last Updated on Monday, 31 January 2011 15:36 |
