Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Père-Lachaise Cemetery

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

The most famous cemetery in Paris has some of the most famous people in the world buried there. And it's quite lovely.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, this is Leverand Cox. I'm an actress, producer and host of the Leverand Cox show. Do you like your tea with lemon or honey? History making Broadway performer Alex Newell. When I sing the Holy Ghost shows up, that's my ministry and I know that well about me. That's the tea honey. Whoever it is, you can bet we get into it. My guest and I, we go there every single time. I can't help it. Listen to the LeVern coq show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, Dave's here in Spirit,

and Jim Morrison's here in Spirit 2. The Lizard King? Yeah, the very lizard king. Why do they call him that? So lame. He called himself that. Come on Jim. Sorry Josh.

I think he was super cool but that's just lame. Well I agree. Well, we'll slam Jim Morrison to the end. Alright, with the reason we bring up Jim Morrison's because we're talking about parallel shades cemetery. Well, we'll slam Jim Morrison. All right, with the reason we bring up Jim Morrison's, because we're talking about parallel shades cemetery, one of arguably the most famous cemeteries in the entire world, in no small part

because Jim Morrison's buried there. Yeah, I mean, it's on a famous people who will go over in a minute, but have you ever been there? No, never have. Oh, okay. I have a couple of times, both my trips to Paris, my buddy Brett and I walked around and went to Jim Morrison's grave,

as well as quite a few others. Did not leave any trinkets or anything, but there were quite a few trinkets and marijuana cigarettes, jazz cigarettes, and all sorts of stuff like that, and a bunch of hippies. But it's just a beautiful, beautiful stroll because it's a beautiful cemetery. Yeah, apparently it is the cemetery that kicked off the Gardner Landscape Cemetery craze where they went from the old medieval churchyards where they literally buried people on top of other people for centuries to building a cemetery

that's super spread out, that's laid out with like nice shrubs and trees and flowers and winding paths and places to sit even like it was a radical departure from what people had been doing in Europe all the way up to that time and it was I, first built in 1804 by Napoleon, correct? I mean, he built it himself in his very time. He got a shovel. That's true. We should thank our old friends at Howstoforx.com and Nathan Chandler for some of this,

and then some other websites we went to. But we, yeah, Napoleon, 1804, he said, you know what? Let's build this thing. It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be vast. The paths are even going to have little street signs on them. It's going to feel like a little miniature city. And that's kind of what feels like when you're walking around, it's the largest one in Paris. I say obviously, but if you've never been there, then you may not understand when you're in there. You realize just how big it is, but it's more than 100 acres large and has over a million interments.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing. That's per a guy named Keith Eganer, who's a professor at the University of Oregon who how stuff works talk to about it. He just happens to be an expert in cemeteries, including pair Lache's cemetery. And one of the things that I think you kind of hit on that's worth saying is it has a kind of like urban feel to it. So much so that like the places segregated essentially into neighborhoods. It is.

And segregated by religion too. I don't know if this is something they still do. It seems like an outdated thing, but maybe they still do it because of history. Well, I have a feeling you get in where you fit in in parallel shades because the cemeteries in Paris are so full. I saw that there's about 5,000 requests

to be buried in any of Paris's 14 city cemeteries. Oh wow. But only 150 plots available per year. Among all 14, not just parallel shades, but parallel shades is probably in demand more than any other. The problem is, is that means that the price of those plots has risen, commensurate to that demand, and Paris is very frequently chastised for basically making it seem like

it only wants the wealthiest citizens buried in its cemeteries. I wonder if it's a case where you can just out bid for these or what that process is like or if it's like, sorry, you know, you're on a list and you can't buy your way up that list. Or you go to the trouble of poisoning your direct competitor and didn't think it through because now he got the plot because he died before you did. That wouldn't be too hard in Paris because you just throw it in a whistle. Someone will eat it. So who are the people that are buried there chucked? Give us a few names.

Well, how about a cliffhanger? We'll take a sort of an early break here. Okay. Because I know everyone's dying to know. And we'll talk about some of those names right after this. Oh! My name's Leverene Cox. I'm an actress, producer, fashionista, and host of the Leverene Cock Show. You may remember my award-winning first season? I've been pretty busy, but there's always time to talk to incredible guests about important things. People like me have been screaming for years. We've got to watch the Supreme Court what they're doing is wrong, what they're doing is evil. They will take things away and I can only hope that

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Listen to separation anxiety with large-scale markets on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, everyone. If you've been there, then you know you can see Jim Morrison. The graves that I went to, how about this? I'll read the ones that I went to and then you can fill in the rest. I stopped by Oscar Wilde's grave. Very nice. I stopped by Chopin.

I love Chopin. Is in Frederick. I like Chopin, I mean. Oh, sure. Let me see what other ones. Oh, I went by Edith P. Oscarave. And I think there was one more on this list. Proust.

Marcel Proust? Yep. I went by that one. I don't think I saw any, I mean, I may have walked by and not realized in my early 20s, who is Adora Duncan-Wilens or something, but those are the ones that I made a point to go see. Is Adora Duncan was a famous writer? She held Paris Solange. Eves Montan. Eves Montan is there. He's an actor. Marcel Marcel, the famous mind is buried there and is there. And his shown as a three-dimensional bust of him locked in a permanent scream of terror.

Of course. Silent, of course. I mean, I've seen that one too, actually. That sounds familiar. Marcel Marceau's? Yeah. I think that's... I just made that up though. He's not really screaming on his headstone. Oh, he's not. Okay, then I didn't see it.

What have I seen like that, though, or Did I just have like a implanted memory? I don't know, I think maybe you did pick up one of those jazz cigarettes from Morrison's Craven walked around with it. I've held it all this time, it's vintage. Another person there is Moliere who is a very famous actor from the 17th century, very beloved actor in the 17th century. And he was one of the people who kicked off the parallel shades cemetery, because at first it was such a radical departure

from the type of burials that people were used to in Paris, that it was not immediately popular. The other problem is that when it was built, it was built at the edge of Paris. So it was kind of hard to get to. So to get people interested, they actually found Mollier's remains allegedly. It made a big deal out of burying him there to just kind of get some attention for it.

Yeah, because I think your choices before then, you mentioned those church yards and they always had, well not always, but even back then they had burial space issues because at those church yards, they were just burying people on top of one another and they wouldn't necessarily bury your family together. It just seems like burial has always been a problem in Paris for one reason or another. I guess space. For sure. Well, one of the other reasons that it's so tight right now is because in the church

yards they just buried people on top of people we were saying but in parallel shades in the other city cemeteries that followed you could buy a plot for eternity essentially so that's why they started to run out of plots that makes sense here's a couple more names Gertrude Stein we did mention Gertrude Stein how could we not? Or Sarah Bernhardt? Yeah. That's another big one. Who is Georges Serra? Serra, he was an impressionist painter, along with Delefort. Oh.

Okay, yeah. He was also very there. And I misspoke. I said, Isadora Duncan was held the Paris salons, and it was an author and art collector. That was Gertrude Stein. Isadora Duncan was a beloved dancer in Paris? And that was it. Was that after, oh no, they were both after the break. I just wonder how many people just said I'm done with the show. So the name itself though, parallel shades comes from

King Louis the 14th Confessor, right? That's right, father. Oh boy, you need to take this one. Father, Francois, I know you. Die, de la chace. That's die, de, a, i, x, that's how this pronounced. Mm-hmm, die. Okay. So his name, father, is, pair is father, like as in a priest. Also, as a dad, but in French. And La Chace means the chair.

So his name is paired the chair. It's pretty good. I think I'm the first person in history to turn that up. To make that joke? Well, yeah, but it's a research-based joke. Yeah, sure. Like all of our jokes. Sure. It's a big tourist attraction now. Like I said, obviously, you know, a lot of people go because it's not only a place where you can go see Oscar Wilde and Kurt Steine and pay your respects at their headstones, but it is a, as all urban cemeteries are, it's a bit of a respite. It's a bit of a break from the hustle and bustle to stroll around this shady, beautiful park almost with dead bodies all over the place. Wow, that's amazing. Because yeah, I think how many people visit a year, do they say?

About 4 million people every year. That is a lot. I mean, it's definitely, I mean, it's large, but it's not like you're going to stroll for 300 feet without seeing another person. Wow, that's really pretty. For people all over. Yeah. So if you wanted to get there, you would go to stroll for 300 feet without seeing another person. Wow, that's really neat. For people all over. Yeah. So if you wanted to get there, you would go to 16 Rude Repos, which means Repos, which means rest. It's a very appropriate name for a city, cemetery, street that it's on, right? And one other thing about it that really stuck out to Mech chuck was that they also buried Ebalard and hellawees who were

definitely worth looking into and I think we should actually do a short stuff on them. But they were one of the most famous couples of the medieval era, maybe of all time, like a real-life Romeo and Juliet. Right. Didn't end quite the same but was still very tragic. But they wrote letters to one another. I feel like we've talked about them before. They wrote letters to one another that were preserved and these love letters are just so amazing that people still read them today.

And that was another case of they were kind of putting that out there too, like, oh, they're buried here as well to try and pump up interest, right? Exactly. They brought them together in the afterlife by rebearing them together in a specially designed crypt. That's really nice. I would say that I know we did Hollywood forever or did we do the other one in LA? We did both. We didn't do Hollywood forever.

We did both? I don't think so. No, I said we didn't. Okay. Just for us long. Yeah, that's my understanding. All right, well all of these We have Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta, which is very nice as well And all of these places are great But none of them hold a candle to that little cemetery in Woodstock, New York where you can go see

Levant Helm and Rick Denko's Grave stones from the band. Okay, fair enough. My favorite cemetery. I've got nothing to top that, so I think that short stuff is that way. Staff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are where every listen to your favorite shows. or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.