Père Lachaise Cemetery

Napoleon opened Père Lachaise in 1804, named for Père François de la Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV, whose former residence once stood on the site. It was a hard sell at first — the cemetery sat well outside Paris's centre and carried none of the prestige of older, more central burial grounds — so its administrators staged a savvy publicity move in 1817, transferring the remains of Molière and the medieval lovers Abelard and Héloïse here to lend the new cemetery instant historical weight. It worked: burial requests soared, and the cemetery has since expanded to 44 hectares, making it the largest green space in Paris proper.

Its roster of the buried reads like a highlight reel of European culture: Chopin, Oscar Wilde (whose Modernist tomb, designed by Jacob Epstein, was for years covered in lipstick kisses from visitors, since removed by a protective glass barrier), Édith Piaf, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, and — the single most-visited grave — Doors frontman Jim Morrison, whose modest grave still draws a steady stream of fans decades after his 1971 death.