Famous Graves at Père Lachaise, With a Map and a Route

The famous graves at Père Lachaise are spread over a hillside of numbered divisions with no signposts, so the trick is to know the division before you set off. Jim Morrison is in division 6, Chopin in 11, Molière and La Fontaine in 25, Oscar Wilde in 89 and Édith Piaf in 97. The divisions below come from the City of Paris’s own plan of the most requested graves; the positions on our map come from mapped tomb locations.

The famous graves, by division

Divisions from the City of Paris plan of the most requested graves; checked October 2026.

One famous tomb is out of sight until 2027. The City of Paris says the tomb of Héloïse and Abélard is under restoration and will be visible again, restored and consolidated, when the work ends in August 2027 (checked October 2026). You can still walk past division 7, but you will not see the monument.

Have a guide take you to them →

A map of the famous graves

Open the full-size map

The city also publishes free maps: a general plan with the avenues and division numbers, and plans of the most requested graves by field, including one of famous women. There is an interactive version for phones too. Print or download one before you go: there is no Wi-Fi in the cemetery, and the general plan alone does not name anybody.

A self-guided route, top to bottom

The cemetery climbs from the main gate on Boulevard de Ménilmontant up to Porte Gambetta, so the easy way round is to start at the top and walk down. This loop takes in all the graves in the table. By our measurement on the map it is about 3 to 3.5 km on the paths, which is three hours with stops, and more if you get lost, which everybody does.

1. Start at Porte Gambetta (Métro Gambetta). Proust and Apollinaire are a few minutes away, then Balzac and Delacroix.
2. Allan Kardec in division 44, then the columbarium for Isadora Duncan and Maria Callas’s niche.
3. Oscar Wilde in division 89, then back west to Montand and Signoret and Sarah Bernhardt.
4. Down to Victor Noir, east to Gertrude Stein, then Modigliani and Édith Piaf.
5. The Communards’ Wall on the eastern edge.
6. West to Molière and La Fontaine, then down to Jim Morrison in division 6.
7. Past Héloïse and Abélard (under restoration until August 2027) to Chopin, and out by the main gate.

Two things to know before you walk it. The paths are old cobbles and earth, uneven and narrow in places, with steps; wear proper shoes. And a funeral may be under way beside any grave: keep your voice down and give the family room. You may not sit or climb on a tomb, even for a photograph.

Five graves with a story

Jim Morrison. A plain headstone behind a barrier. A bronze bust by Mladen Mikulin stood on the grave from 1981 until it was stolen in 1988; Paris police announced in May 2025 that they had found it. Fans stick chewing gum on a nearby tree. More on Morrison’s grave.

Oscar Wilde. Wilde died in Paris in 1900 and was first buried outside the city; his remains were moved here in 1909, and Jacob Epstein’s tomb, with its flying winged figure, followed. Visitors began kissing it with lipstick in the late 1990s, and the grease soaked into the stone, so when the tomb was restored in 2011, with money from the Irish government, it gained a glass barrier. More on Wilde’s tomb.

Chopin. Auguste Clésinger’s monument, unveiled in 1850, shows Euterpe, the muse of music, mourning over a broken lyre. His heart is not here: his sister took it to Warsaw, where it is kept in the Holy Cross Church.

Victor Noir. A young journalist shot in 1870 by Pierre Bonaparte, the emperor’s cousin. Jules Dalou’s bronze shows him lying where he fell, and the shine on certain parts of it comes from generations of visitors hoping for love or a child.

The Communards’ Wall. On 28 May 1871, at the end of the Paris Commune, 147 Communards were shot against the cemetery’s eastern wall and buried in a trench at its foot. Every year, on the Saturday nearest 28 May, people walk up to the wall to remember them.

Do it with a guide instead

A guide does the route for you in two hours and fills in the stories, which is why most first-time visitors take one. City Wonders’ Famous Graves walk is the classic version: Wilde, Morrison, Piaf, Chopin and Molière, in English or French, from about $21 (October 2026). The haunted walk adds the legends, and the full comparison covers all seven tours.

One correction to some tour listings you may read: City Wonders’ description still says Wilde’s tomb is “covered entirely with bright red lipstick”. It has been behind glass since 2011, and the stone has been cleaned.