History
In the early 19th century, on the orders of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, all the cemeteries in Paris were replaced by several large new ones outside the precincts of the capital. The Montmartre Cemetery was built in the north, the Père Lachaise Cemetery in the east, and the Montparnasse Cemetery in the south. The Passy Cemetery was a later addition, but has its origins in the same edict.
Opened in 1820 in the expensive residential and commercial districts of the Right Bank near the Champs-Élysées, by 1874 the small Passy Cemetery had become the aristocratic necropolis of Paris. It is the only cemetery in Paris to have a heated waiting-room.
The retaining wall of the cemetery is adorned with a bas relief commemorating the soldiers who fell in the Great War. Sheltered by a bower of chestnut trees, the cemetery is in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
Read more about this topic: Passy Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)