Monday, December 22, 2025

Certainly a place to visit--someday--I'll send the couples I create there--

From wiki below:
In 1804, the Père Lachaise contained only 13 graves. The next year there were 44 burials, with 49 during 1806, 62 during 1807 and 833 during 1812. Consequently, the administrators devised a marketing strategy to improve the cemetery's stature: in 1817, with great fanfare, they organized the transfer of the remains of Jean de La Fontaine and Molière to the new resting place. Then, in another great spectacle, the purported remains of Pierre Abélard and Héloïse d'Argenteuil were also transferred to the cemetery along with their monument's canopy made from fragments of the abbey of Nogent-sur-Seine. By tradition, lovers or lovelorn singles leave letters at the crypt in tribute to the couple or in hope of finding true love.[citation needed]
This strategy achieved its desired effect: people began clamoring to be buried among the famous citizens. Records show that the Père Lachaise contained more than 33,000 graves in 1830. Père Lachaise was expanded five times: in 1824, 1829, 1832, 1842 and 1850. At present, there are more than 1 million bodies buried there, and many more represented in the columbarium, which holds the remains of those who had requested cremation.[6]
The Communards' Wall (Mur des Fédérés), located within the cemetery, was the site where 147 Communards were executed by the French Army during the Semaine sanglante, "The Bloody Week", following the final battles between the Army and the Paris Commune.[7][8]
The Commune soldiers, who had been captured in earlier battles by the French Army, were taken to the prisons of Mazas and la Roquette, where they were quickly tried by military courts and sentenced to death. They were then taken to Pere Lachaise, where they were lined up against the wall and shot, and buried in common graves.[9]
The site is a traditional rallying point for members of the French political Left.[citation needed]
Adolphe Thiers, the second elected President of France, and the first President of the French Third Republic, who led the suppression of the Commune, is also interred in the cemetery.[citation needed]

Gavin Bowd--The Last Communard--

https://www.google.com/search?q=Gavin+Bowd--The+Last+Communard&sca_esv=8fbdbe968a7e09e0&sxsrf=AE3TifNDavynHFU5DrwhpJI4689EPdLWvA%3A1...