This prestigious garden cemetery never sleeps.
Tourists roam through it by day and cats by night.
Established in 1804, Pere LaChaise was sorely needed to remedy the overcrowding in church and city cemeteries that had become so dire that pressure from all the bodies buried in Cimetiere des Innocents caved in the wall of a neighboring apartment house, overwhelming residents with bones and the stench of decaying flesh. Many of the most famous people in the world fill the tombs along its 118 acres of city-like streets and walkways. This cemetery is the place to see some fascinating monuments and markers, like that of poet George Rodenbach whose stone arm extends up out of his tomb and holds up a rose. Or painter Theodore Gericault whose stone likeness reclines in bed with his palette and brush in hand. The blackness on parts of the statuary above adds a touch of hauntedness, but it's unintentional.