Montmartre Cemetery

The Montmartre Cemetery sits in a deep, abandoned gypsum quarry below the street level of the surrounding neighborhood. It holds a distinct, sunken appearance because the city used the massive pit to dump refuse and bodies during the French Revolution. In eighteen twenty-five, the site opened as a formal burial ground to relieve the pressure on overstuffed churchyards. Composer Hector Berlioz and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky lie here, tucked away among the tangled ivy and the stone arches of the Caulaincourt Bridge overhead.