The Celebrity Graves of Pere Lachaise

POOR oul’ Marie Elisa Bullot. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or rather she was placed somewhere that over time eventually became wrong.

Marie Elisa is one of history’s next-tos. Her grave is beside that of Jim Morrison in Pere Lachaise in Paris. Pere Lachaise is one of the city’s most storied cemeteries. A lot of very famous people are buried there. It was opened in 1804 and originally Catholics didn’t want to be buried there because it was not consecrated. Then the authorities dug up some celebrities and reinterred them at Père Lachaise to give the place a patina of glamour. It’s a ploy that happened often during the boom when golf courses got ‘slebs’ to live in adjoining mews. Père Lachaise, however, is still solvent.

I was in the area last week (with what I loosely call work). Like all tourists, I ignored the thousands of other graves and went ... er ... straight for those of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. Morrison’s grave has been such a magnet for fans over the years that now it has a barrier around it. It’s a token effort and it hasn’t prevented people from placing their tributes on his headstone. There are bottles of Jack Daniels, cigarettes and a surprising number of empty cans of Dutch Gold which proves that ‘people are strange’. Bullot’s grave has been scribbled on and knocked over.