For most of us, the thought of death and where our mortal remains will spend their eternal life is a real estate problem we are reluctant to deal with. It’s no wonder that the cremation rate in the United States has gone up dramatically. In 1964, just 3.6% of deceased Americans were cremated. By 2024, 61.8% of the departed were cremated.
But what if you not only want a traditional burial, but want to be interred in a historic cemetery? A new program being offered by the burial authorities in Paris, which has both a shortage of graves and of green space. An upcoming auction will not only get bidders to clean up some of the city’s neglected graves and give them a chance to acquire a burial plot in a historic cemetery like Pere Lachaise or Montmartre.
Paris graveyards have long been tourist attractions. Some 3.5 million people visit Pere Lachaise each year, making it the world’s most popular necropolis, (“city of the dead”) or graveyard with tombs. Over one million people are buried at Pere Lachaise, from the late Jim Morrison of The Doors to Gertrude Stein and Marcel Proust.
Winners of the auction, to be held in January, might end up near artistic heroes like Morrison, poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, pianist and composer Frederic Chopin, or painter Amedeo Modigliani. All of these artists are buried in the large Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
The city of Paris is offering the chance to buy and restore funeral monuments in Père-Lachaise, Montparnasse and Montmartre, three of the city’s best-known cemeteries.
Some 30 neglected gravestones or monuments from the 19th-century will be available. Apparently maintenance is up to the family, rather than the graveyard or the city, so inevitably plots fall into disrepair. The purchaser is required to repair the monument and get a nearby plot.
Ten old headstones, often without legible inscriptions, will be available from each of the three cemeteries. They are being put up for sale at €4,000 each.
Right now applications are restricted to people who currently live in Paris, although perhaps some enterprising souls outside the city might get Parisian friends to enter for them. Despite the worldwide trend towards cremation, there is a shortage of burial places in France. So there was considerable interest in the three cemeteries. The decision was made by the Paris council to allocate the monuments via a lottery in January 2026.
The lucky winners have certain requirements to meet.
- The purchased monument must be restored within six months, and the new work must be “faithful to the original.”
- You must get a burial plot adjacent to the restored monument “within a specified timeframe,” although presumably one’s time to fill the plot will be more flexible.
- Do it or lose it. If the restoration of the monument, or the purchase of a nearby plot is not completed appropriately or within the timeframe , the sale will be cancelled and your payment forfeit.
The city of Paris does offer both purchase and “rental” options on burial plots. The plots can be leased for a fixed terms or bought as an eternal purchase. Some of the published rates associated with the new program include:
- €976 for a 10-year lease
- €3,354 for a 30-year lease
- €5,260 for a 50-year lease
- €17,668 to secure a plot in perpetuity
Should your leas expire sans renewal, “the plot may be resold and reused.” Whether your remains remain or are removed was unclear.
Pere Lachaise is a special place, and not just because of all the celebrities who have taken up permanent residency there. Père-Lachaise Cemetery is the largest of the 14 cemeteries in Paris. At 110 acres, it is also the largest green space in the city. Parisians often use the cemeteries as open space for picnicking and other activities.
Tombs and memorials can also be big for the tourist trade, from the Pyramids to Mao’s Mausoleum in Beijing, visited by millions weekly. The catacombs of Paris, underground ossuaries where more than 6 million bodies are entombed, are a ticketed attraction.
So is Napoleon’s Tomb. The French emperor was laid to rest at Napoleon’s Tomb in Las Invalids in 1861, 40 years after his death in exile in St. Helena. A truly grandiose monument was built for his remains. It gets more than 1.5 million visitors a year, even though there is some doubt that Napoleon’s remains are entombed there. The French government has never permitted a DNA test.
In the same way, cemeteries like Pere Lachaise are full of stories. Yes, Chopin’s body is buried there, but his heart is (literally) in Poland. Chopin, reputedly afraid of being buried alive, had asked for it to be removed. And if you come upon a gravestone with a few madeleine cookies atop it, you have found the final resting place of Marcel Proust.
But by far the most popular grave at Pere Lachaise is that of Jim Morrison. The singer and his girlfriend had gone to Paris with the hope of shaking his drug problems. He is said to have wandering the grounds of Pere Lachaise, visiting the grave of his idol, Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. When Morrison passed away on July 3, 1971, the decision was made to bury him at Pere Lachaise. Today, the grave is often covered with flowers, even 54 years after his death at 27.
If you’re more interested in a visit to Pere Lachaise than a permanent residency, getting there is relatively simple, according to influencer and rock aficionado Taylor On A Trip. To visit Morrison and the others, one takes Line 2 of the Paris Metro to the Père Lachaise or Philippe Auguste stations on and enters the cemetery through one of the main entrances on Boulevard de Menilmontant.
A map available at the cemetery will be helpful, but Taylor notes, “You’ll find that when you look this up on Google Maps, Jim Morrison’s grave is literally a pin on the map.”
Get there early in the day, as even in death, Jim Morrison still draws a crowd. That will also give you time to visit Gertrude Stein, Marcel Marceau, Wilde, Chopin, or perhaps the illegible gravestones up for sale.