This fascinating historic site is right outside the door of our hotel, the Mercure Montmartre. It was apparently an old gravel quarry with a rather dark history. Innocent people have lost their lives there during times of conflict when it was used as a mass grave, including for the hundreds of Swiss Guards murdered during the French Revolution. Now, however, visitors come to see the graves of many famous artists, musicians and intellectuals, many of whom were part of the Montmartre cultural life of the 19th and early 20th century. Just a few of its famous dead inhabitants: Hector Berlioz, Degas, Dumas, Foucault, Heinrich Heine, Truffault, Rousseau, and Emile Zola.
What’s remarkable about those structures is that they hold such a special value all these years. They stand for those brave and remarkable souls of the past. That’s what cemeteries actually are; these serve as a place for us to always remember our departed loved ones. We may not see them physically anymore, but their essence is always in the cemetery where they’re buried.
ReplyDelete- Loria Schleiff