The Père Lachaise cemetery is one of the must-sees in Paris: the biggest green area in the city (comprising 44 hectares, as big as the Vatican State) it is especially famous for hosting the graves of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, and a long list of French celebrities of 19th, 20th and even 21st centuries (Balzac, Delacroix, Proust, Apollinaire, Piaf, Colette…).

Most guide books or maps sold outside the entrance focus on the location of the graves, which is also what most visitors ask (“Where is Jim Morrison, please?”).

However, as a lover of this place, I would rather recommend you just stroll several hours in the cemetery without any specific goal, escaping from the main roads in order to wind around the graves or the almost broken staircases on the flank of the hill and to appreciate the place more as a museum of funerary sculpture and an urban park rather than a famous dead VIP section…

My favorite isolated area, especially in spring and summer, is the Chemin des Chèvres (literally the Goats’ Path), a hidden path which runs along the main slope, and where you have a bigger chance seeing cats or sunbathers chilling with a book than groups of tourists in search of (the actually quite disappointing) Morrison’s grave…