Pere la chaise cemetery, Paris

[Mart 'n' Al]

2-years ago I fulfilled a long-standing ambition of visiting this world-famous cemetery. I recently uploaded the following film which I made from my photographs. I do not receive anything from YouTube If you watch this. It is posted purely out of my goodwill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H__Tk-rjhHk

I think it is a powerful and moving combination of my photographs and Elton John's music.  See how many famous names you notice.

Martin

[HughC]

You never told me you were going there, Martin!

Had I known, I could have asked you to look out for the grave of David Turnbull, sometime consul in Havana (until the Spanish declared him persona non grata for daring to criticize their God-given right -- as they saw it -- to take and keep slaves).  His wife was a relative of mine, but I didn't know of their existence in 1976 when I had digs more or less opposite one of the gates to Cimetière Père Lachaise and quite often walked through it.

You seem to have found a lot more people than I ever did.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Hugh, we would have looked if we had known.  We love cemetery missions.  I've made a couple of people happy with our 'field research'.  Earlier in the holiday we did a self-guided tour of Montparnasse Cemetery, which is nearly as interesting.  We had to go back the next day, after research, as we failed to find Saint-Saens.  We had walked within a few feet of him several times.

Martin & Alice

[HughC]

Did you find Bellini?  Just inside the main entrance to Père Lachaise, if memory serves.
I confess I didn't watch your film from beginning to end.

You seemed to dwell rather on Oscar Wilde's monument, but I couldn't see whether a certain anatomical detail of the naked angel (I assume it's an angel) has been restored.  Someone had hacked it off when I was there.

I think you'd like the Alter Nördlicher Friedhof in Munich.  Surrounded by high brick walls, with lots of mature trees that give welcome shade on a hot day.  I don't think there's anybody really famous buried there, but more than a few who made local history and have had streets named after them.  It wouldn't take very long to walk round it, but then there's plenty more to see in Munich.

[Mart 'n' Al]

I had to find out about Bellini.  No, we missed him.  I think we had had a special request for pictures of Oscar Wilde's grave, hence the number of them.  I think we went to the Munich cemetery about 20 years ago, while there for a wedding, but it was before my first digital camera, so there won't be many/any photos.

I've just recently added a film of Arlington Cemetery & The Pentagon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9TWt-3DzUg

Just yesterday I added Omaha Beach & the US War Cemetery.

https://www.youtube.com/video/OezYaMpkN5w

My all-time favourite is New Orleans cemetery.

Martin

[HughC]

My favourite has to be the old Blaris burial ground near Lisburn (about 10 miles SW of Belfast).
It's very small, all humps and bumps, graves all higgeldy-piggeldy with hardly a straight line in the place.  Can't think why they chose that site, when there's plenty of flat ground nearby.  No church, though possibly there was once.  Sacred pagan origins, perhaps?

I'd like to encourage people to submit photographs of gravestones (with legible inscriptions if possible!) in churchyards and cemeteries they visit to Find a Grave or Billion Graves or the Gravestone Photographic Resource, all of which can be googled up.  Potentially very useful for those of us who can't travel all over the country in search of dead rellies.