Passy Cemetery - History

History

In the early 19th century, on the orders of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, all the cemeteries in Paris were replaced by several large new ones outside the precincts of the capital. The Montmartre Cemetery was built in the north, the Père Lachaise Cemetery in the east, and the Montparnasse Cemetery in the south. The Passy Cemetery was a later addition, but has its origins in the same edict.

Opened in 1820 in the expensive residential and commercial districts of the Right Bank near the Champs-Élysées, by 1874 the small Passy Cemetery had become the aristocratic necropolis of Paris. It is the only cemetery in Paris to have a heated waiting-room.

The retaining wall of the cemetery is adorned with a bas relief commemorating the soldiers who fell in the Great War. Sheltered by a bower of chestnut trees, the cemetery is in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

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