Ninety-Six Thousand Graves to Decipher

The word comes from the Greek: taphos, grave, and philia, love. A taphophile is someone with a passion for cemeteries — their history, their architecture, their inscriptions, their statuary. The phenomenon is not new: as early as the 1820s, Père-Lachaise was a Sunday walking place for Parisians, who came to admire the monuments and read the epitaphs. But the word “taphophile” is recent, and the practice took shape at the start of the twenty-first century, with the appearance of specialist associations, dedicated websites and events such as the Printemps des cimetières. Père-Lachaise, with its 96,600 plots spread across 44 hectares, is the largest playground of French taphophilia.

The Friends and Enthusiasts of Père-Lachaise — the APPL — are the heart of the cemetery's taphophile community. Founded in 2004 and chaired by Régis Dufour Forrestier, the APPL records graves, documents monuments, runs themed tours and publishes biographical notes on its website. Each APPL tour brings together 10 to 20 people — the themes change from year to year: funerary symbolism, pioneering women, animals depicted on monuments, violent deaths. The APPL's work has documented hundreds of graves that the cemetery's own conservation office had not identified. Other associations take part in the life of the cemetery: the Souvenir Français, the Foundation for the Memory of Deportation, and independent volunteer guides.

A taphophile does not visit a cemetery: they read it. Every stele is a document, every epitaph a compressed story, every symbol a clue to the deceased's trade or beliefs.

A taphophile does not visit a cemetery the way a tourist does. The tourist seeks out the famous graves — Morrison, Piaf, Wilde — and leaves. The taphophile stops at the unknown ones. A broken column marks a life cut short. A winged hourglass recalls the passage of time. A compass and square mark out a freemason. An inverted torch symbolises death. The taphophile deciphers these symbols, notes down the dates, photographs the inscriptions, and cross-checks the information against civil registers and municipal archives. Some Père-Lachaise taphophiles have pieced together entire biographies from a mere three-line epitaph carved on a forgotten stele in Division 48.

Every year in May, the Printemps des cimetières opens the doors of taphophilia to the general public. In 2024, Père-Lachaise alone offered 18 different tours and events — a record. The themes ranged from “violent deaths” to “illustrious unknowns”. The cemetery's curator, Benoît Gallot, backs this openness: in La Vie secrète d'un cimetière, Gallot describes taphophiles as allies of conservation, whose documentation and outreach work helps preserve funerary heritage. Père-Lachaise is France's largest open-air sculpture museum — and taphophiles are its volunteer curators.