Abstract

ryan roark The cemetery of Père-Lachaise in Paris has been called the first modern very beginning, Père-Lachaise was described as being a subject for pictures. As cemetery, the soul of Paris, and even the model for an ideal modern city. this reputation was reinforced throughout the nineteenth century, as visitors Since opening in 1804, it has been one of the most widely represented entered this landscape, they increasingly could not avoid imagining themselves cemeteries in the world. Representations of Père-Lachaise in guidebooks and also as the subject of pictures, constantly subject to external gaze. Early other publications signaled to local and international visitors how to circulate descriptions primarily depict the cemetery as a garden, interspersed with through, experience, and view the cemetery. Likewise, the evolving nature of stone monuments, a place where the visitor could become pleasantly lost, these representations throughout the nineteenth century reflects—and at the roaming from grave to grave, while taking in an unparalleled view out over time no doubt reinforced—visitors’ changing attitudes toward life and death, the city. This vision was in fact so compelling that it persisted in many pictorial and toward an increasingly dramatized conception of solitude and self. As the and textual