Cimetière de Montparnasse

The Cimetiere de Montparnasse is a famous cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, France. It is in the 14eme arrondissement.

- Montparnasse Cemetery -

Created from three farms in 1824, Montparnasse the cemetery was originally known as Le Cimetiere du Sud. Cemeteries had been banned from Paris since the shutting down of the Cimetiere des Innocents in 1786 on the fringe of Les Halles food market on the grounds that it presented a health hazard. Several new cemeteries replaced all the Parisian ones, outside the precincts of the capital, in the early 19th century, Cimetière de Montmartre in the north, Le Cimetiere Pere Lachaise in the east and Cimetiere de Montparnasse in the south. At the heart of the city, and today, sitting in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is Cimetiere de Passy.

Montparnasse Cemetery is the eternal home of many of France's intellectual and artistic elite as well as publishers and others who promoted the works of writers and artists. There are also monuments to police and firefighters killed in the line of duty in the city of Paris.

Because of the many notable people buried there, it is a highly popular tourist attraction.

Among the people buried here are:

• Alexandre Alekhine, Russian-born chess world champion
• Georges Auric, composer, member of Les Six
• Frédéric Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty
• Jane Bathori, opera singer
• Charles Baudelaire
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau[?], painter
• Antoine Bourdelle, sculptor
• Samuel Beckett, Irish writer
• Simone de Beauvoir, feminist philosopher
• Constantin Brancusi, sculptor
• Jean Carmet[?], actor
• André Citroën automobile manufacturer
• Jules Dalou[?], sculptor
• Robert Desnos[?], poet
• Alfred Dreyfus, military officer
• Jules Dumont d'Urville, explorer
• Henri Fantin-Latour, (painter)
• Léon-Paul Fargue, poet and essayist
• Charles Garnier[?], builder of the Paris Opera
• Serge Gainsbourg, poet and singer
• François Gérard[?], painter
• Jean Antoine Houdon, sculptor
• Joris-Karl Huysmans, writer
• Eugene Ionesco, playwright
• Pierre Larousse, French author of a well-known dictionary
• Henri Laurens sculptor, engraver
• Guy de Maupassant, writer
• Jean Pierre Rampal, Flutist
• Man Ray, photographer
• François Rude, sculptor
• Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, literary critic, author
• Camille Saint-Saens, composer
• Georges Sand, writer
• Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher
• Jean Seberg, American actress
• Tristan Tzara, poet and essayist
• Ossip Zadkine, Russian-born sculptor

See also: List of other famous cemeteries

External Links

• A collection of photos of the cemetery's many sculpted monuments (http://members.lycos.co.uk/jcspix2/grv.htm)
• A list of many buried at the cemetery (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/famousSearch.cgi?mode=cemetery&FScemeteryid=639007)