It was not until the beginning of the Empire period that Frochot, first Prefect of the Seine, established a new burial policy. The decree of June 12th 1804 saw the creation of three large cemeteries, then outside Paris: Père Lachaise (a cemetery in the east), Montparnasse (a cemetery in the south), and Montmartre (a cemetery in the north). The cemetery of Père Lachaise is the most famous and most visited in Paris. With a surface area of 44 hectares, it has a total of around 70,000 burial plots. Today, it is the largest open green space in the capital. In 1626, the Jesuits of the rue St-Antoine acquired the property of a rich merchant; at the time it was planted with vines. It was there that in 1652 Louis XIV attended the fighting during the period of political troubles known as 'la Fronde'. Later, father François d'Aix de la Chaise, confessor of Louis XIV was laid to rest there and this contributed, thanks to the generosity of the king, to the embellishment and extension of the domain to which his name is given. Later, after having been resold, the domain was given over to the City of Paris in 1803. It was to Brongniart that Nicolas Frochot, Prefect of the Seine, under the Empire period, gave the plans for the future necropolis. He designed a new kind of cemetery combining landscaped park in the English style with a place of contemplation. All styles of funerary art are represented: Gothic tomb, Haussmanian vault, classical mausoleum or simple tombstone.
Famous people buried in Père Lachaise:
Maréchal Ney - Louis Blanc - Alfred de Musset - Balzac - Colette - Alphonse Daudet - Gérard de Nerval - Proust - Oscar Wilde - Frédéric Chopin - Bizet Héloise and Abélard - Haussmann - Ferdinand de Lesseps - Richard Wallace - Nadar - Sarah Bernardt - Simone Signoret -Jim Morrisson and Edith Piaf.