If you’ve been to a Paris cemetery, you might have seen curious collections of unusual objects on certain gravestones.
Potatoes, chewing gum, Metro tickets, apples… and more.
In this episode, tour guide Ana Gimena from LivTours breaks down some of the main offerings you can find on gravestones at Père Lachaise and Montparnasse cemetery.
Find out more about LivTours and their Paris tours here, and book their Père Lachaise walk here.
The Earful Tower podcast episode
Listen to the episode below, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep scrolling to learn about seven unusual objects people leave as offerings, and where you can find them.
The graves on YouTube
Get a closer look at the tombstone offerings via our YouTube channel (and subscribe for more here).
Chewing Gum for Jim Morrisson
What connects chewing gum to singer Jim Morrison from The Doors? No one really knows! But over the last 20 years, people have been sticking chewing gum on a tree near his grave. As there is a barrier around Morrison’s grave, visitors started putting ritualistic chewing gum as an offering for Morrison on the nearby tree trunk. The chewing gum placement became so frequent (and, let’s face it, unclean) that cemetery workers have added a bamboo casing around the tree. Visitors now place their gum on the tree’s casing instead.
Location: Père Lachaise Cemetery
Potatoes for Antoine-Augustin Parmentier
Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a French farmer and pharmacist who popularised eating potatoes in both France and Europe. In the 16th century potatoes were not seen as a vegetable for humans, but Parmentier proved that they were easy to grow, preserve and that they can indeed be very tasty. Due to his efforts, potatoes were declared an edible vegetable by the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1772. There are now many French potato dishes named after him, and visitors to the Père Lachaise cemetery sometimes place a potato on his grave to honour his legacy.
Location: Père Lachaise Cemetery
Lipstick kisses for Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde’s stone grave was once so covered in lipstick kisses that cemetery workers encased it in a glass barrier. The glass is much easier to clean (and it gets cleaned regularly). There were only a few kisses on the day we visited, but the glass is known to get rather smothered indeed.
Kissing this grave has become one of the most popular Pere Lachaise traditions, in honour of this iconic Irish writer who lived and died in Paris.
Location: Père Lachaise Cemetery
A quick “good luck stroke” for Victor Noir
Victor Noir, a journalist assassinated for political reasons, lies beneath a statue crafted in his likeness, just after his death. The sculpture depicts him reclined, with a bullet wound, a fallen hat, and a rather prominent example of his manhood, which is visible from a distance beneath his clothing.
With Victor Noir, visitors don’t leave apples or potatoes, but their fingerprints… Visitors tend to touch his most intimate region, with superstitious women doing so in the hopes of falling pregnant. Those fortunate enough to conceive after touching Mr. Noir will sometimes return to express their gratitude, leaving gifts of baby socks and shoes.
Location: Père Lachaise Cemetery
Metro tickets for Fulgence Bienvenue
The “father of the Metro”, Fulgence Bienvenue, was the engineer who created the Paris subway system. To pay homage to him, people place their Paris Metro tickets on his grave.
Location: Père Lachaise, Division 82, #1
More Metro tickets for Serge Gainsbourg
Beloved French singer Serge Gainsbourg can have several unusual objects on his grave stone (and now we’re in Montparnasse cemetery on the other side of town).
Mostly, people leave Metro tickets, because he wrote a song called le poinçonneur des Lilas – a tale about a Paris metro attendant.
Sometimes, people leave cigarettes (as Gainsbourg was a renowned chain smoker), and sometimes they leave whole cabbages in honour of his lesser-known song l’Homme à la tête de chou: the Man with the Cabbage Head.
Location: Montparnasse Cemetery, Division 1
Apples for President Jacques Chirac
Former French President Jacques Chirac loved apples. There was no other way to put it. He even had an apple in his logo during his presidency campaign. People bring apples to his grave to thank him for his time serving the people of France.
Location: Montparnasse Cemetery
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This episode was brought to you by LivTours, whose guides offer more than 30 experiences in and around Paris (and hundreds more across Europe). Their tour groups are small – max 6 people – or private and include everything from Pere Lachaise Cemetery and the Catacombs, to day trips in Versailles, Giverny, and Champagne.
They also do food tours of the Marais, small group and private visits to the Louvre, and TukTuk tours of Paris. Find out more here about LivTours here.
The only ones I haven’t done are Parmentier and Chirac … next time