Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Photos and thoughts about Paris

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In all these years of summering in Paris, we’d never visited the cemetery at Passy, in the 16^th arrondissement. Yesterday afternoon, we decided to go there at last. Napoleon I ordered cemeteries in Paris to be replaced by cemeteries outside the city in the early 19^th century. Thus began the cemeteries of Montmartre, Pere Lachaise, and Montparnasse. Less well known but also the result of this same edict was the cemetery of Passy. In 1802, the original Passy cemetery closed because of health reasons. It was replaced by the current cemetery in 1820. Over the next four decades, the cemetery was enlarged somewhat. Basically, it is about two hectares of chestnut trees atop a hill, surrounded by high stone walls, and full of tombs, tombstones, sculpture, and cobblestone lanes. There are a total of about 2,600 tombs within these walls. The cemetery and the village of Passy were annexed to the city of Paris in 1860. Its entry port and reception building were built in 1934, in the same style as the nearby Palais de Chaillot at the Trocadero. Interestingly, among the many well-known people interred in this cemetery, women are particularly well represented, according to an informative sign just inside the entry. These include poets Renee Vivien and Rosemonde Gerard, painter & writer Marie Bashkirtseff, painter Berthe Morisot, actresses Rejane and Julia Bartet, and American silent film star Pearl White. Also buried here are writers Tristan Bernard, Henri Bernstein, Edouard Bordet, Franis de Croisset, Jean Giraudoux, Paul Hervieu, and Octave Mirabeau. Musicians here include Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, and André Messager. The famous painter Edouard Manet rests here as well. There are a number of historical figures buried at Passy, too, but I won’t list them all, except to mention the aviator Dieudonne Costes, whose tombstone is creative. One of the sad sights was the grave of Leila Pahlavi, the daughter of the exiled shah of Iran, who died of a drug overdose (barbituates and cocaine) in a London hotel in 2001 at the young age of 31. She’d been a fashion model and had suffered from anorexia and other disorders. We were rained upon while in the cemetery, but it was only a drizzle, so we ignored it and carried on with our tour and photographing. Since we’d started our walk by strolling up the avenue Suffren and working our way through the mob near the Eiffel Tower so that we could cross the Pont D’Iena to climb the Trocadero, we decided to return via the Pont Bir Hakeim, passing the attractive Square Yorktown with its impressive statue of Benjamin Franklin. After stopping to buy bread at the organic bakery, we arrived home just in time to see the end of the day’s stage of the Tour de France. We were so tired we decided not to go out for dinner, so there’s no restaurant to rave about today. Today’s a rainy one, so I’m managing to do some things like produce the Zonta Sanibel-Captiva newsletter and update the Committee of the Islands web site. We feel like we’re beginning to get back into the swing of things, but Dad’s last days took a toll on both of us. We’re still recovering. We both feel like we don’t want to travel anywhere this summer, so we’ll probably being staying put here at home-away-from-home Paris. We find it to be an excellent place to heal. Contrary to what many Americans think, we believe the French are, on the whole, kind, gentle, and polite people. Our server at Le Terminus Balard, for example, could not have been nicer. He, like others, complimented us on our French but then went on to speak to us in English. Maybe it is especially this neighborhood that is so polite and caring. The young man who helped me in the Orange boutique on rue du Commerce, for example, was nicer and more helpful than the woman last year at the Orange boutique on the boulevard Saint Germain in the 6^th. But to be fair, the people in the 6^th must feel overwhelmed by foreigners. Here in the 15^th, the foreign invasion isn’t so bad. Here’s to a soothing summer in Paris. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook. Note: For addresses & phone numbers of restaurants in this journal, click here.

Saturday, July 9, 2011 Images from the Passy Cemetery. ← Previous Next →