Behind his graves of personalities known around the world, the emblematic Parisian place, a true “open -air museum”, is full of anecdotes, legends … and real biodiversity.
by
Book. In the cemetery staff, professional experience is not measured in years but in “coughs”. This is to say the importance of this day that Benoît Gallot, Curator of Santa Claus, “would not miss for anything in the world”, he who has “seventeen coughed”, including five spent at the head of the most visited in the world.
By dint of surveying the 43 hectares of this “pantheon bis” -where, among other personalities, Méliès, Chopin, Modigliani and Piaf -, to watch over this “open -air museum” designed by Alexandre -Théodore Brongniart , and, above all, to stroll, as soon as the doors closed, to immortalize on icy paper or on his Instagram account (“life in the cemetery”) the fauna and the flora that surround it, the one that resides in the year at 16 , rue du rest, knows all the corners. And, of course, all the legends and anecdotes which he stings with flavor this “secret life of a cemetery”.
A book where, with an alert pen, the author intertwines the story of the Santa Clachaise and the celebrities who rest there -starting with Jim Morrison, the most visited -, his career as a curator and his life family. Doing so, he describes the multiple facets covered by a profession that is not dismal, according to him. Because, for this lawyer by training, fell very young in the “funeral pot” – his parents had a marble -, “managing a cemetery is first to accompany the living”.
And it is there, on the side of the living, that his work is placed, which intends to change the look at an unknown and poorly considered universe. Through those who work there – guardian, cantonnier, gravedigger, engraver … -, to which he pays a tribute supported. But also a place which knew, thanks to the prohibition of the use of pesticides in 2015, a small “green revolution”.
the communion of mineral and plant
“With the progressive greening of the aisles and the reappearance of the crazy herbs between the tombs, a new ecosystem was put in place. The cemetery that I managed was no longer only a place dedicated to death, it was transformed under my Eyes in a real refuge for a local biodiversity made up of plants, insects, birds and even mammal “, writes Benoît Gallot, a time perplexed in the face of these changes. His meeting with a rebirth, during the first confinement in 2020, will complete his conversion as a preservative-Naturalist.
Consequently, over his wanderings, camera in hand, he became familiar with the floral and arboreal heritage of Père-Lachaise, which has more than 4,000 trees of 80 different species. Better still, overcoming his phobia of birds, he learns to locate Corneille, parakeet, charcoal chick, pinson and other oaks and twenty species – out of sixty listed – who reside year.
You have 10.31% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.