Cimetière de la Villette

The Cimetière de la Villette stands out for its irregular, triangular shape, forced into the narrow space between two major roads. This graveyard opened in eighteen hundred and four to replace overcrowded parish burial grounds in the north of Paris. It remains one of the smallest cemeteries in the city. When the nearby slaughterhouses expanded in the nineteenth century, the city planners pushed the cemetery boundaries right up against the industrial walls, leaving just enough room for the narrow rows of gravestones.