Dead People Know How to Party

So after neglecting it for the past 2 months, I finally made it over to Cimetière Montparnasse. I didn't even see half the cemetery- it proved to be much larger than I had anticipated. There are a ton of people buried there, including some famous people such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Serge Gainsbourg, Man Ray, and Baudelaire. It has a very distinctively different feel from cemeteries in the US. There is very little space between each individual grave, thus making it difficult to get around once you step off the main paths. None of the graves consist of just a headstone, with the coffin laying six feet under dirt and grass. Instead, many people rest in sarcophagus- type things, or little dead-people houses (this is probably not their proper name). I also saw a few graves bearing fairly recent dates (like 2007), which caught me off guard- for some reason I had assumed that the cemetery was full and that they were no longer burying people there.


The graves themselves ranged from pretty normal (meaning bor-ing) to sort of odd. I think my favorites were the older little dead-people houses with ornate iron doors.


While I was walking around, I saw some people jogging and a few women pushing their kids along in strollers. Perhaps to the Parisians, cemeteries are just public parks that happen to have a bunch of dead people. I was also amazed how quiet it was. I visited during rush hour, and the cemetery is bordered by several main thorough-fares filled with cars, buses, and bicycles. One would have thought some of the noise would have penetrated the walls.


This tower is apparently the remnants of a 17th century windmill.


As I was leaving, a guard emerged from his little guard-shack and started blowing on his whistle. Apparently, this is the cue for people to get the hell out of the cemetery. I am fortunate that I happened to be right next to where he was, because if I had been on the other end of the cemetery, I probably would have ignored it, having no idea who on earth was obnoxiously whistling. I'm definitely planning on going back with my nice camera sometime in the very near future, before the leaves all fall off and things get super-depressing.