The North cemetery, commonly called the Montmartre cemetery, opened on January 1st 1825. It has a surface area of almost 11 hectares. In the 18th century the land occupied by the current cemetery gave on to chalk quarries that were then numerous in this area. At the time of the Revolution these abandoned works were used as common graves for the victims of riots, including several hundred Swiss Guards in the Tuileries Gardens on August 10th 1792. For some years, this necropolis was used to contain a large number of Parisians, who could no longer be buried in the capital following the closure of all the cemeteries intra-muros. To put an end to this situation, in 1798, the City of Paris purchased just over a hectare of land, to give the people of the 'right bank' a decent cemetery. Unfortunately, it very soon became insufficient and had to close. In 1847, 9 hectares of adjoining land was annexed. Since this period, the cemetery has remained unchanged, apart from the extension of the rue Caulaincourt to the Bd de Clichy by a metallic bridge built in 1888, then enlarged 1987-1988. Today, the cemetery numbers more than 20,000 burial plots and some 500 people are buried there each year. Famous people buried in the Montmartre cemetery : Jules Simon - Maréchal Lannes Sanson (Charles and François - Bourreaux) les Goncourt - Labiche - Ernest Renan - Stendhal - Alfred de Vigny - Emile Zola - Feydeau - Théophile Gautier - Heinrich Heine Degas - Gustave Moreau - Hittorff - Poulbot - Berlioz - Léo Delibes - Offenbach - Michel Berger - Adam Ampère - Jean Charcot - Sacha Guitry - Dalida - Pierre Dux.