Père Lachaise: The most visited cemetery in the world
The Earful Tower: Paris
Oliver Gee
4.8 • 749 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Let's take a closer look at the Père Lachaise cemetery of Paris, the most visited necropolis on earth.
All kinds of famous and interesting people are buried here including Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde… and about a million more. Some 3.5 million people check it out annually.
In this episode you'll hear from author Joe Start, who wrote a book on Père Lachaise called The Chairfather - a literal translation of the cemetery’s French name. This part of the episode is taken from the Earful archives.
Joe visited the tombstones countless times to research the book and interview the dead, and today on The Earful Tower he shares his tips on which graves to find, what to avoid, and how not to act if you’re a tourist there.
And if you like what you hear, you can find the Chairfather book here or on ebook here.
At the end of the episode, Marie Segura from My Private Paris talks more about the cemetery.
In fact, this whole season of The Earful Tower is brought to you by My Private Paris, which is an award-winning travel company creating deluxe itineraries for Paris and beyond. See what they offer here and be sure to let them know that you came from The Earful Tower.
Enjoying what we’re doing here at The Earful Tower and keen to see more? Become a Patreon member here to support it and to discover our exciting extras.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone. When I say chair, father, what do you think? You probably don't think, I wonder what that would be in French. |
| 0:10.7 | But if you did, you'd come to the conclusion that I'm talking about per les cheeses. |
| 0:16.5 | Per la chaise, father the chair. Why do I say that? |
| 0:21.5 | Well, these episodes are all about the Père L'Aches Cemetery, |
| 0:26.3 | and the guests you're going to hear in the first part of the episode wrote a book called |
| 0:31.9 | The Chairfather. |
| 0:33.7 | After his hundreds and hundreds of visits to the cemetery in Paris, he decided to put it into a book. |
| 0:42.9 | So Pellas Shez is what you're going to hear. |
| 0:45.3 | At the end of the episode, you're going to hear Marie Sigura from my private Paris, also talking about the Pellas Shez Cemetery. |
| 0:53.3 | A note on them to start. |
| 0:54.5 | They're sponsoring this whole season of the podcast. |
| 0:57.0 | And if you want to book a tour of Paris or indeed a day trip outside of Paris, |
| 1:02.2 | you should do it with them. |
| 1:03.5 | Myprivateparis.com. |
| 1:05.4 | More from them at the end. |
| 1:07.0 | But as for the main chunk of this interview, |
| 1:09.9 | it's with the author Joe Start. And this is actually |
| 1:13.7 | an episode that I recorded in season two of the podcast. And I'm re-sharing it today because, |
| 1:20.6 | firstly, I think there are so many, so many new listeners to this show who weren't around |
| 1:27.3 | in season two, up to season 16 now I think |
| 1:30.5 | so I think statistically no one's heard it and if you have heard it it's time to hear it again |
| 1:37.0 | because it was a fun episode and a topic that's proved ultra popular on my website over all these |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Oliver Gee, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Oliver Gee and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.