Père-Lachaise cemetery
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Père Lachaise

Final resting place of a host of French notables, as well as a fair few foreigners, Père-Lachaise (Mon–Fri 8am–5.30pm, Sat 8.30am–5.30pm, Sun 9am–5.30pm; free; M° Père-Lachaise/Phillipe-Auguste) is sited on a hill commanding grand views of Paris and sprawls across some 116 acres, making it one of the world's largest cemeteries. In fact, it's a bit like a miniature town in itself with its grid-like layout, signposts and neat cobbled lanes – a veritable "city of the dead". Size aside, it's surely also one of the most atmospheric cemeteries – an eerily beautiful haven, with terraced slopes and magnificent old trees that spread their branches over the moss-grown tombs as though shading them from the outside world.

Finding individual graves can be a tricky business. The free plans given out at the entrance will point you in the right direction, but it's worth buying a slightly more detailed map as it's easy to get lost; the best one is published by Éditions Métropolitain Paris (around €2) and should be available in the newsagents and florists near the main entrance on boulevard de Ménilmontant.

Père-Lachaise was opened in 1804 and turned out to be an incredibly successful piece of land speculation. Nicolas Frochot, the urban planner who bought the land, persuaded the civil authorities to have Molière, La Fontaine, Abélard and Héloïse reburied in his new cemetery, and to be interred in Père-Lachaise quickly became the ultimate status symbol for the rich and successful. Ironically, Frochot even sold a plot to the original owner for considerably more money than the price he had paid for the entire site. Even today, the rates are extremely high.

Among the most visited graves is that of Chopin (Division 11), who has a willowy muse mourning his loss and is often attended by groups of Poles laying wreaths and flowers in the red and white colours of the Polish flag. Many other musicians repose nearby, among them Bellini, Cherubini, the violinist Kreutzer, whose commemorative column leans precariously to one side, and the more recently deceased French jazz pianist, Michel Petrucciani. Rossini is honoured with a spot on the avenue principale, though in fact his remains have been transferred to his native Italy. Swarms also flock to the grave of ex-Doors lead singer Jim Morrison (Division 6), who died in Paris at the age of 28. Once graffiti-covered and wreathed in marijuana fumes, it has been cleaned up and put under police guard to ensure it stays that way, though this hasn't stopped fans scribbling messages in praise of love and drugs on other tombs, and trees, nearby.

Some of the most celebrated dead have unremarkable tombs, while those whose fame died with them have the most expressive monuments. Femme fatale Colette's tomb, close to the main entrance in Division 4, for example, is very plain, though always covered in flowers. The same holds true for the divine Sarah Bernhardt's (Division 44) and the great chanteuse Édith Piaf's (Division 97). Marcel Proust lies in his family's black-marble, conventional tomb (Division 85). Just across the way is the rather incongruous-looking Crematorium (Division 87), crudely modelled on the Aghia Sophia in Istanbul, with domes and minarets. Here among others of equal or lesser renown lie the ashes of Max Ernst, Georges Pérec and American dancer Isadora Duncan, who was strangled when her scarf got tangled in the rear axle of her open-top car.

In contrast to these modest monuments, in Division 48 a now-forgotten French diplomat, Félix de Beaujour, is marked with an enormous tower, around 140 feet high (opinions differ on whether the sculptor's intention was a lighthouse, a giant phallus or a contemporary take on an Etruscan obelisk). To the north in Division 86, one Jean Pezon, a lion-tamer, is shown riding the pet lion that ate him. In Division 71, two men lie together hand in hand – Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel, a pair of balloonists who went so high they died from lack of oxygen. In Division 92, journalist Victor Noir – shot at the age of 22 in 1870 by Prince Napoleon for daring to criticize him – is portrayed at the moment of death, flat on his back, fully clothed, his top hat fallen by his feet. However it's not as a magnet for anti-censorship campaigners that his tomb has become famous, but as a lucky charm – a prominent part of his anatomy has been worn shiny by the touch of infertile women, hoping for a cure.

Other bed scenes include Félix Faure (Division 4), French president, who died in the arms of his mistress in the Élysée palace in 1899; draped in a French flag, his head to one side, he cuts rather a romantic figure. Géricault reclines on cushions of stone (Division 12), paint palette in hand, his face taut with concentration; below is a sculpted relief of part of his best-known painting The Raft of the Medusa. Close by is the relaxed figure of Jean Carriès, a model-maker, in felt hat and overalls, holding a self-portrait in the palm of his hand. For a more fearsome view of death, there's the tomb of a French judge, Raphaël Roger, in Division 94, where a figure, cowled from head to foot, stands sentinel beneath a pointed arch; or the poet in Division 6, bursting out of his granite block.

Painter Corot (Division 24) and novelist Balzac (Division 48) both have fine busts; Balzac set the final tragic scene of his novel Père Goriot in Père Lachaise. One of the most impressive of the individual tombs, the base of which is usually covered in lipstick kisses, is Oscar Wilde's (Division 89), topped with a sculpture by Jacob Epstein of a mysterious Pharaonic winged messenger (sadly vandalized of its once prominent member, which was last seen being used as a paper weight by the director of the cemetery). The inscription behind is a grim verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Approaching Oscar Wilde's grave from the centre of the cemetery, you pass the tomb of Auguste Blanqui (Division 91), after whom so many French streets are named. Described by Karl Marx as the nineteenth century's greatest revolutionary, he served his time in jail – 33 years in all – for political activities that spanned the 1830 Revolution to the Paris Commune.

South from Blanqui's and Wilde's graves, in Division 96, you'll find the grave of Modigliani and his lover Jeanne Herbuterne, who killed herself in crazed grief a few days after he died in agony from meningitis. Laura Marx, Karl's daughter, and her husband Paul Lafargue, who committed suicide together in 1911, also lie in this southeast corner of the cemetery (Division 76).

It is the monuments to the collective, violent deaths, however, that have the power to change a sunny outing to Père-Lachaise into a much more sombre experience. In Division 97, you'll find the memorials to the victims of the Nazi concentration camps, to executed Resistance fighters and to those who were never accounted for in the genocide of World War II. The sculptures are relentless in their images of inhumanity, of people forced to collaborate in their own degradation and death.

Finally, marking one of the bloodiest episodes in French history, there is the Mur des Fédérés (Division 76), the wall where the last troops of the Paris Commune were lined up and shot in the final days of the battle in 1871. The man who ordered their execution, Adolphe Thiers, lies in the centre of the cemetery in Division 55.