One of my favorite places to visit in Paris is the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Hundreds of famous people - artists, musicians, writers, scientists, & statesmen - are buried there & it feels very much like an outdoor museum to me. There are hundreds of decorative statues, busts, & tombs in all different styles & materials, most with the fine patina of age. This is the first of about a half dozen of my favorite photos from Pere Lachaise. Some info from Wikipedia: "Pere Lachaise is still an operating cemetery and accepting new burials. However, the rules to be buried in a Paris cemetery are rather strict: people may be buried in one of these cemeteries if they die in the French capital city or if they lived there. Being buried in Pere Lachaise is even more difficult nowadays as there is a waiting list: very few plots are available. The gravesites at Pere Lachaise range from a simple, unadorned headstone to towering monuments and even elaborate mini chapels dedicated to the memory of a well-known person or family. Many of the tombs are about the size and shape of a telephone booth, with just enough space for a mourner to step inside, kneel to say a prayer, and leave some flowers. The cemetery manages to squeeze an increasing number of bodies into a finite and already crowded space. One way it does this is by combining the remains of multiple family members in the same grave. At Pere Lachaise, it is not uncommon to reopen a grave after a body has decomposed and inter another coffin. Some family mausoleums or multi-family tombs contain dozens of bodies, often in several separate but contiguous graves. Shelves are usually fitted out to accommodate them. In relatively recent times, Pere Lachaise has adopted a standard practice of issuing 30-year leases on gravesites, so that if a lease is not renewed by the family, the remains can be removed, space made for a new grave, and the overall deterioration of the cemetery minimized. Abandoned remains are boxed, tagged and moved to Aux Morts ossuary, in Pere Lachaise cemetery. Plots can be bought in perpetuity or for 50, 30 or 10 years, the last being the least expensive option. Even in the case of mausoleums and chapels, coffins are most of the time below ground. Although some sources incorrectly estimate the number of interred as 300,000 in Pere Lachaise, according to official website of the city of Paris, one million people have been buried there to date. Along with the stored remains in the Aux Morts ossuary, the number of human remains exceeds 2–3 million."