It’s easy to forget that cemeteries were made for the living.

Where first we come in sorrow we often return again for something else. We discover that places of eternal rest have many moods and designs, from the peaceful, almost romantic air of Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with its cobbled avenues that have their own street names, to the fields of infinite sacrifice at Arlington National Cemetery. Yet in whichever idiosyncratic precinct we linger awhile, we sense the dead watching and taking our measure as well, keeping us company as much as we are keeping company with them. People today have become too transient, unsentimental, agnostic and forgetful to spend much time in graveyards, which is a shame as a visit can put them back touch with history, back in touch with their ancestors. It can be reflective, restorative, even rejuvenating.

With views to die for, Waverley Cemetery is perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, surrounded on three sides by some of the most expensive real estate in Sydney. It is the last resting place of several important Australian literary and political figures from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Another great burial precinct in Paris.

Space and content balance meant that in Great Burial Places I could only cover three sites in Paris: Père Lachaise Cemetery, the Pantheon and the Catacombs. But there is one more burial precinct that is well worth a visit. The Basilica of Saint Denis, a beautiful Romanesque abbey church in the north of Paris, was the last resting place of all but three of the kings of France. It was ransacked during the French Revolution and all the bodies buried there were dug up and destroyed, but the building is a magnificent example of medieval French architecture and there have been several royal burials and transfers of royal remains from elsewhere since the Revolution.

The father of Egyptology

One of the people mentioned in Great Burial Places as being interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is Jean-Francois Champollion, the genius who cracked the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic code. He was an arrogant and brilliant child of the French Revolution who made loyal friends and bitter enemies and was most of the time at odds with the Church and much of the Establishment. I have just come across an entertaining and authoritative biography of him by Andrew Robinson called Cracking the Egyptian Code. The revolutionary life of Jean-Francois Champollion (Oxford University Press). A great read.

Champollion's grave (Copy)

Jean-Francois Champollion (Copy)