Paris Encore 2022 - Honoring Rock & Roll and Revolution

Rick visited a local boulangerie first thing this morning, and brought back some little quiches, a baguette and 2 pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants), for our breakfast. As much as we love coffee and all things gluten, we felt the need for some protein too, thus the quiches. The shop is just across our street. He got back so fast I thought he’d forgotten something, but no, it only took a few minutes for this entire shopping trip. The baguette cost a whole euro, subsidized by the government. Every French person has a right to good bread at a reasonable cost.

Today our plan is to take the Metro over to Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, in the 20th Arrondissement. It’s just a few Metro stops away from our neighborhood station, Place de la Nation. This cemetery is the largest and most elite of any cemetery in Paris. Not to disparage the many famous French authors, poets, composers and other dignitaries, but our main interest here is to visit the grave of Jim Morrison, American Rock and Roll icon, who died in Paris in 1971. Our Rick Steves guidebook indicated we should get off at the Gambetta stop. That turned out to be at the farthest corner from Jim Morrison’s grave, where there was also an entrance. ( The Phillipe Auguste Metro station seems the closest.) I guess Rick Steves was making sure we’d see something beyond the American Rock and Roller. We did. The cemetery is full of interesting monuments, and we saw several people there tending the graves of family members - tidying them up, replacing flowers.

I could add 100 more pictures of amazing monuments and headstones. The place is gigantic. Chopin, Pissarro, Baron Haussmann, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are all buried here.

We came upon this monument, and wondered who it was. We could have asked the young woman who walked up, kissed the stone, and went on her way as we stood there.

Alain Baschung was a singer-songwriter and actor, known as one of the most important French rock musicians. He died in 2009, at the age of 62, and is obviously still loved.

Then there was this monument. The author Violaine Vanoyeke is still alive, but has her spot ready.

Finally, we reached Jim Morrison’s resting spot. It was surrounded by a low fence, and there were a handful of other fans there. 

Gum stuck to a bamboo fence protecting a tree trunk right next to the chain link fence was an interesting 

commentary, or was it supposed to be a tribute?

I visited this spot in 1995, and there was graffiti on the graves all around Jim Morrison’s. There was also a uniformed guard nearby. I was sad to think visitors, hopefully not all American, had defaced everything in the area. There had been a bust of Jim on top of the grave initially, but that was stolen long before I was there. So, it’s better now. There’s still evidence of the graffiti that was scratched into the surrounding  headstones, but that’s nothing compared to what it looked like years ago.

We’ve checked Rock and Roll off of our to-do list for today, and now we’re on to Revolution. Two Revolutions, that is. But first, we had a history lesson about our neighborhood. Our landlord mentioned the Picpus Cemetery, and recommended we see it. He told us a bit of the story that made it famous.

The Place de la Nation, very near our building, had originally been named the Place du Trône (Square of the Throne). It was an entry point to the city, where taxes were levied on people bringing in goods to sell. During the French Revolution, the Place was re-named the Place du Trône Renversé, the Square of the Overturned Throne. During what was known as the Great Terror, Robespierre was a key figure in the condemnation and execution of 1306 people here in the square. The charges brought against them were mostly petty, absurd or imaginary. Those included were ex-nobility, religious men and women, military men and commoners.  The victims, executed by guillotine, ranged in age from 16 to 85, and all of this happened in a six-week period - between June 14 and July 27, 1794. Sixteen Carmelite nuns were among those executed, because of their faith, and mounted the scaffold singing the Salve Regina. They were beatified by the church in 1906.

After all this, Robespierre’s sidekicks turned against him, and he was guillotined. They were undoubtedly afraid that they would become his next victims.

The corpses of the 1306 victims were taken, under cover of darkness, and thrown into two mass graves at the bottom of the walled garden of a convent that had been appropriated by the revolutionaries. Families of those killed secretly met and found the location of the graves. They secretly bought the land, and turned it into a place of meditation and prayer, watched over to this day by the Sisters of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. There’s a chapel on the grounds where the walls are inscribed with the names, ages and occupations of the victims. 

This is now the only private cemetery in Paris, and only the descendants of those killed in the square are allowed to be buried in this cemetery. That’s how General-Marquis de LaFayette, hero of the American Revolution, came to be buried here. His sister-in-law, mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law had all been guillotined during that horrible time. It is said that he brought soil from Bunker Hill, in Charlestown, Boston, back to France, and this soil covers his grave. He died of natural causes in 1834. An American flag flies over his grave, and each year on July 4, the American ambassador visits the grave. 

Below is the gate through which the cart of bodies would be taken, after dark, for burial in a common grave.

At the back of the cemetery, the unmarked graves are recognized.

LaFayette is buried next to his wife, and the American flag flies over him, in gratitude for his involvement in the American Revolution.

Other family graves, related to the victims, fill the small cemetery.

The cemetery is very moving, and a reminder of the excesses of men led astray by materialistic ideologies.

The park that leads to the cemetery affords a few minutes of contemplation before reaching the cemetery itself.

There is a small fee of 2 euros per person to enter the walled park and cemetery, but it’s well worth the cost.