Small-group walking tour
Two hours on foot, downhill from the Gambetta gate to the boulevard, with about a dozen graves and the history that connects them.
- 2 hours
- Maximum 20 people
- €19 per person
Book nowSee the route and what’s included →
Paris, 20th arrondissement
Guided walking tours of Père Lachaise Cemetery
Two hours on foot, downhill from the top gate, with about a dozen graves and the two centuries of history that connect them. Entry to the cemetery is free; what you are booking is a guide.
Entry is free
Père Lachaise is a public cemetery. You are paying for a guide, not for admission.
Twenty people maximum
Small enough that you can hear, ask questions and stop when you want to.
Licensed guides
Every walk is led by a holder of the French carte professionnelle de guide-conférencier.
Two hours
Downhill from the top gate. Everyone else does it the other way round.
Why come at all
The largest cemetery in Paris, and the one people actually walk in
Père Lachaise opened in 1804 on the site of a Jesuit retreat, laid out by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart as a garden rather than a churchyard: winding paths, planted trees, a hill with a view of the city. It was a new idea, and for the first decade Parisians hated it. It was too far out, and it was not a churchyard, and almost nobody would be buried in it.
What changed it was a marketing decision. In 1817 the administration moved Molière and La Fontaine here with a great deal of ceremony, and Héloïse and Abélard shortly after. Plot sales went from a trickle to a flood. By 1830 there were more than 33,000 graves, and being buried at Père Lachaise had become a statement about the kind of family you were.
Two centuries later it covers 44 hectares with 15 kilometres of paths, takes around 3 million visitors a year, and still holds around around 10,000 funerals. That last number is the one worth holding on to. This is not a museum with graves in it. It is a working cemetery that happens to contain the best open-air collection of nineteenth-century funerary sculpture in Europe, and the people you will pass on a Tuesday morning are not all tourists.
A guide is not necessary. You can walk in free, any day, and many people should. What a guide gets you is the shape of the thing — which graves connect to which, why a monument looks the way it does, and what the four hundred metres between two famous names actually contains.
The walk
One scheduled walk, and a private version of it
Both start at whichever gate makes the route work, both are led by a licensed guide-conférencier, and neither of them charges you to enter a public cemetery.
Private tour
Your group, your guide, your route — built around the people you have actually come to see, at a pace that suits whoever is walking slowest.
- 2 to 3 hours, as you prefer
- Up to 20 people
- €219 per group
Book nowSee the route and what’s included →
Who is buried here
Six of the graves people come for
Oscar Wilde
Div. 891854–1900 · Writers
Jacob Epstein's winged monument, glazed since 2011 to stop the lipstick eating the stone.
Read the full entry →
Jim Morrison
Div. 61943–1971 · Musicians
A flat stone behind a low barrier, with a Greek inscription chosen by his father.
Read the full entry →
Édith Piaf
Div. 971915–1963 · Musicians
Buried under her married name, Lamboukas, with her father, her daughter and her second husband.
Read the full entry →
Frédéric Chopin
Div. 111810–1849 · Musicians
Clésinger's weeping muse over the grave. His heart is in Warsaw.
Read the full entry →
Marcel Proust
Div. 851871–1922 · Writers
A plain black marble family tomb, shared with the brother who got the book into print.
Read the full entry →
1622–1673 · 1621–1695 · Writers
The 1817 transfers that rescued a failing cemetery. Whether the right bones arrived is still argued.
Read the full entry →
Plan your visit
Everything you need before you set out, free
Opening hours and gates
Both seasons, all five gates, and the fifteen-minute clearance nobody warns you about.
Check today's hours →
Getting there and etiquette
Which métro station to use, what the ground is like, and how to behave at a working cemetery.
Read before you go →
Do you need a ticket?
No. Here is what is actually being sold when a site advertises Père Lachaise tickets.
See what free means →
Map and divisions
A schematic plan, and an explanation of why the division numbers make no geographical sense.
Find your bearings →
Journal
Recent writing
7 min read
Père Lachaise Cemetery: the complete 2026 visitor's guide
Free to enter, open every day, and about thirty metres taller at one end than the other. Here is what a visit actually involves this year, in the order you will need it.
6 min read
The 20 most famous graves at Père Lachaise (and how to find them)
Twenty graves, twenty division numbers, and an order to walk them in that runs downhill from the Gambetta gate to the boulevard without doubling back once.
6 min read
Oscar Wilde's tomb: Epstein's angel, the kisses, and the glass wall
A twenty-tonne block of English limestone, an anonymous donor, a policeman guarding it from public decency, and a hundred years later a wall of glass. The strangest commission in the cemetery.
Do you need a ticket to visit Père Lachaise?
No. Entry to Père Lachaise is free, every day, for everyone. It is a municipal cemetery run by the City of Paris, not a paid attraction, and there is no ticket office. Anything sold under the word 'ticket' online is a guided tour, an audio guide or an app — never admission.
What are the opening hours?
From 16 March to 5 November: Monday to Friday 08:00–18:00, Saturday 08:30–18:00, Sunday and public holidays 09:00–18:00. From 6 November to 15 March the cemetery closes at 17:30 instead. Clearing begins fifteen minutes before the posted closing time.
Is Père Lachaise worth visiting?
If you have three days in Paris and a list, probably not. If you have five or more, or you have any interest at all in nineteenth-century sculpture, French history or the people buried here, it is one of the most rewarding two hours in the city — and one of the very few free ones.
How long does it take to see the cemetery?
Forty-four hectares and fifteen kilometres of paths. Two hours gets you a proper introduction and about a dozen graves. Half a day gets you a real sense of the place. Nobody sees all of it, including the people who work here.
Is the cemetery accessible?
Partly. The City of Paris describes the paths as old cobbles and packed earth, irregular and in places very narrow, which is accurate. The main avenues are surfaced and manageable; the side paths between graves are frequently not, and the ground climbs about thirty metres from the boulevard to the Gambetta gate.
Can you visit a specific grave?
Yes, and it is worth knowing the division number before you go — the cemetery is signed by division, not by name. Our index of famous graves lists the division for everyone people usually come for, and a private walk can be routed around whoever you are looking for, including a family grave.
Walk it with someone who knows the ground
Two hours, twenty people maximum, starting at the top of the hill so that every step of it is downhill. Entry to the cemetery is free — you are paying for the guide.