Understanding the 97 Divisions of Père-Lachaise

Ninety-seven numbered Divisions, five successive extensions, whole squares once set aside for particular faiths or trades: the map of Père-Lachaise is anything but a simple administrative grid. Division by Division, it tells the story of a cemetery that had to grow five times over to make room for the whole of Paris.

Opened on 21 May 1804 on the former retreat grounds of the Jesuits of Mont-Louis, the cemetery covered only a modest area at first. Paris grew fast, and Père-Lachaise had to keep pace: five successive extensions, in 1824, 1829, 1832, 1842 and 1850, took it from around seventeen to forty-four hectares. Each new stretch of ground was given its own Division numbers, added on after the previous ones without the original plan ever being renumbered — which is why the layout follows the history of the site's growth rather than any strict geographical logic.

Every new plot receives its own set of division numbers, and the original layout is never renumbered.

Some Divisions carry a history all their own. Division 7, now known simply as the Jewish square, is said to have been created around 1810 — though some sources put it as early as 1808. For many years it was enclosed by its own wall, with a purification room and a keeper's lodge, and its own entrance, now called the Porte du Repos. Divisions 39 and 40, meanwhile, make up the Protestant square, created in 1807 after the death of the pastor Jean-Frédéric Mestrezat, on ground that had once been marshland dotted with old ponds.

Division 85 is linked to a mosque built in 1857 to mark the Muslim graves in the cemetery — a building since demolished, whose story is told elsewhere. Further to the south-east, Division 76 carries the memory of a far more violent event: it was against its wall, known as the Communards' Wall, that a hundred and forty-seven fighters of the Paris Commune were shot on 28 May 1871, during the Bloody Week. A little further on, the quarter of the Marshals of the Empire brings together monuments largely carved by David d'Angers, though no source pins down exactly which Division it belongs to.

Of this historical layout, some very concrete markers remain today: the foundations of the Jewish square's wall, still visible in places, the commemorative plaque fixed to the Communards' Wall in 1908, and above all the numbered signs at every path junction. More than any map, these are what still let visitors find their way, Division by Division, around the cemetery.