Whimsy Bower: Pere Lachaise: Part 3

29 July 2015

Pere Lachaise: Part 3

One of the most personally satisfying moments of my trip to France happened in Pere Lachaise. A pair of French visitors to the cemetery mistook me for a local and asked if I knew where a specific grave was. I'd suffered a lot of anxiety about taking my casual style to ultra-fashionable Paris (I don't know what I was worried about exactly; maybe I thought I'd be laughed out of town, or sympathetically handed copies of Vogue or something). When I travel, I want to be comfortable, so it was basically t-shirts, maxi skirts, and converse. The fact that I was mistaken for a Parisian still gives me a little thrill. I think it was my hat, a black Panama:

http://www.thebay.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/en/thebay/panama-hat-0006-17559--24

Never underestimate the power of a good hat.

Felix Faure was the 7th President of France.

Some pretty dianthus that seemed to be growing wild

Some tombs contain chairs or prayer stools for visitors.

Tombs at Pere Lachaise (and many other cemeteries throughout Europe) are leased. If the lease isn't renewed, the bones are disinterred and moved to an ossuary (such as the one behind the "Aux Morts" monument) and the tomb is leased to someone else. Some of the graves and tombs are marked "concession à perpétuité," which means the family has bought the tomb outright and it's permanently theirs.

This man had some good friends--they took responsibility for his monument, and possibly his grave as well.

The rest of the photos are of the tomb of Joaquin Maria de Errazu, of which, apparently, little is known. The tomb is impressive though, featuring several statues by Roland Mathieu-Meusnier.