Père Lachaise is world-famous as the resting place of writers, musicians, artists and thinkers. But Benoît Gallot, curator of the storied cemetery, has been sharing pictures of the wildlife that thrives among the tombs and giving a glimpse of another side to the Parisian landmark.

The City of Paris banned the use of pesticides in cemeteries in 2011, but the benefits really came to light during France’s 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.

It was then that Gallot posted photos of the foxes, weasels, birds and insects that live amongst the cemetery’s 70,000 tombs on Instagram.

He was worried about what sort of comments the foxes, in particular, would attract, since they’re hunted in rural France and have “a bad reputation”.

“I thought maybe there would be some complaints about the photos of foxes sleeping on the tombs,” he says.

But relatives of those buried in the famous cemetery were touched by the scene.

“One family sent me a message just yesterday, saying it was soothing to know their loved one was surrounded by animals full of life,” he says.

While it seems like a paradox, Gallot wanted to show the general public another side to the cemetery.

Many of the photos feature in his book, La Vie Secrète d’un Cimetière (The Secret Life of a Cemetery), published in October 2022.

A life among the tombs

Gallot’s family were in the funerary marble business, and he grew up playing around tombstones in his backyard, aka the showroom.

He decided to study law, but the pull of the funerary vocation was stronger than he thought.

After working at the cemetery in Ivry, just outside Paris, for eight years, he became director of Père Lachaise in 2018.

He now lives and works on rue de Repos (the street of rest), where he shares an apartment with his wife and children above his office in the centre of the cemetery.

“It was a totally normal life; I wasn’t traumatised,” says Gallot, referring to his childhood. “Now I’m in the profession and my children live here among the tombs, like I did.”

Listen to a conversation with Benoit Gallot in the Spotlight on France podcast

As in many other countries, death is still a taboo subject in France, and Gallot set out to show that his job was not as depressing as it might seem.

The families of the deceased are often surprised when they meet the 42-year-old. “They say: ‘Oh! I thought you’d be older!’,” says Gallot.

The job has pushed him to rethink some of his own assumptions too.

One of the first things he did was to buy a black tissue box to have on hand in his office when receiving weeping families.

“It hit me quite quickly that people don’t cry, unless it is something really difficult like a suicide or the death of a child. In fact, 80 percent of the people I meet are happy.”

He admits the tissue box “has become a mere accessory”.

About 100 plots become available in Père Lachaise each year, but Gallot says that most Parisians believe there are no spots at all.

“When they call and realise there is a place, they are very surprised. They feel lucky.”

One woman told him that finding a plot for her husband had “saved her life” – knowing he was nearby had enabled her to mourn.

“Of course there isn’t a place for everyone, but for those who happen to call at the right time when there is an available space, it helps them,” Gallot says.

The cemetery that’s also a park

Père Lachaise opened in 1804 and was modelled on an English garden. It was designed by Alexandre-Theodore Brongniart – a famous architect who later designed the neo-classical Paris Bourse, France’s stock exchange.

“It had lots of vegetation and wide open spaces for going for a walk. But it was a victim of its own success,” says Gallot. “The vegetation diminished, while the numbers of tombs grew.” There are now more than 70,000.

His goal, in line with the pesticide ban, is to keep the famed cemetery like a park, including maintaining the 4,000 trees and 1,000 shrubs.

Caretakers planted trees, but many sprung up spontaneously, growing on the tombs. Some have broken tombstones and sarcophagai as they pushed through the ground.

Protecting the trees is one task, but protecting the tombs from falling trees is another, says Gallot.

The graveyard’s tree caretakers are looking into finding heat-resistant species to cope with the impact of climate change.

Reminders of history

Gallot is responsible for maintaining the plots, and the historical nature of many of the tombs makes his job extremely complicated.

“There are many memorial sites – I underestimated this aspect of Père Lachaise,” he admits. “There is truly an international dimension to this, with embassies coming regularly to take care of the memorial places.”

He’s referring to memorials to plane crashes, as well as the numerous monuments dedicated to foreign combattants who fought for France.

People buried in Père Lachaise nowadays have to have been residents of Paris. Others may not have chosen the cemetery, but were exiles in the French capital when they died.

Famed Irish writer “Oscar Wilde is a bit like this, as well as [Kurdish-Turkish singer] Ahmet Kaya,” Gallot says.

Other memorials are managed by associations, particularly the southeastern area of the cemetery, where a number of Shoah memorials have been erected.

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The City of Paris handles the care and restoration of several tombs, such as the medieval couple Heloise and Abelard, as well as writers Molière and Jean de la Fontaine.

It took over the tomb of famed French writer Honore de Balzac, which had been abandoned as he had no descendants.

The City also handles the 1833-34 monument to the national guards who were killed during an insurrection in Paris.

But it is the French state that takes care of the memorial to the national guards killed in Buzenval in January 1871, during the Franco-Prussian war.

Old tombs and new

Around 30,000 tombs, built before 1900, are listed and cannot be touched. Many are located in the oldest and central part of the cemetery.

Tombs considered historic monuments, like those mentioned above, are also listed.

Even if a family wants to restore a tomb, it has to be approved by an official body of architects.

The 100 plots sold each year come from abandoned tombs.

While it is important to make space in the cemetery, Gallot is conscious of not distorting the history of Père Lachaise.

“It’s a balancing act to preserve the old stones and their charm,” he adds.

Searching for Jim Morrison’s soul in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris

Plots are sold for ten, 30 or 50 years, or in perpetuity.

A two-square-metre plot costs more than 15,000 euros, excluding the tombstone and tomb itself.

Gallot says that most families opt for the ten- or 30-year plan.

Under French law, families must be contacted two years before their concession expires, to either renew the term or have their relative’s bones placed in an ossuary.

Since 2014, when Père Lachaise’s ossuary became full, that means a transfer to Thiais, in the southern suburbs of Paris.

Gallot regularly receives mail from well-wishers around the world. On the day we spoke, he’d received a book on Oscar Wilde’s tomb from a writer in London, and a poem about the cemetery from Canada.

La Vie Secrète d’un Cimetière is not yet available in English, but judging by the many emails and phone calls Gallot receives, there’s no shortage of interest.

As he says: “Père Lachaise is a multifaceted cemetery.”

Originally published on RFI