Chopin's Tomb

Poland's national composer, Chopin, is buried here too. Born in 1810, he died young of tuberculosis in 1849, and countless music lovers still come to Père-Lachaise every day to lay flowers at his grave. His tomb is in Paris, but his heart rests in Warsaw, in his beloved homeland of Poland.

His patriotism showed even at the burial. Polish soil that he had carried out of the country in a silver cup, before leaving Poland, was scattered over his grave. As he had requested, Mozart's Requiem, the composer he admired most alongside Bach, was played at the funeral. The Church of the Madeleine, where the service was to be held, had forbidden female singers to perform, so the funeral was put off by about two weeks. In the end, his family persuaded the church by appealing to it as his last wish, and it allowed the Requiem to be performed. The tomb is watched over by Euterpe, the muse of music, who weeps with a broken instrument in her arms.