The Montparnasse cemetery opened on July 25th 1824. With 19 hectares it is the second necropolis intra-muros in Paris. In the 16th century the present Vavin-Raspail crossroads, situated then in razed countryside, was used as a dumping ground by Parisians : rubble and chippings from nearby quarries were piled up there. In the 17th century, the site was given the mythological name of 'mount Parnasse'. During the French Revolution, the domain was confiscated, along with all Church property. The state health and social services, the new owner, had people buried there, who had died in hospitals with no one to claim their corpses. Famous people buried in the Montparnasse cemetery are: Sainte-Beuve - Henri Poincaré - Proudhon - Dreyfus - Charles Baudelaire - Guy de Maupassant - Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir - Gérard - Fantin Latour - Rude (author of the Marseillaise à l'Arc de Triomphe) - Houdon - Zadkine - Bartholdi Charles Garnier - César Frank - Saint-Saëns - Littré - Larousse - Cécile Sorel - Beckett. Famous sculptors: 'The Four Sergeants of la Rochelle', accused of being part of the 'Carbonari' secret society that tried to raise up France against the Bourbons, were beheaded in 1822. They had been buried at Clamart before being cleared by the July government. A monument commemorates them (8th div.). Tomb T. Rachevskaia. It is here that the famous 'Kiss' of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) can be found. This stone sculpture dating from 1910 is one of the first works carried out in Paris in the cubist style by the Romanian sculptor whose workshop has been reproduced in front of the Beaubourg Centre.