Serge Gainsbourg's Grave

Next is someone who died relatively recently: the French musician Serge Gainsbourg, born in Paris in 1928, who died in 1991 in the city he loved. He is the father of Charlotte Gainsbourg, the actor and musician still active in France and Hollywood, and the husband of Jane Birkin, the fashion muse after whom the Birkin bag is named. He is also known for smoking, all his life, a strong brand of cigarettes whose name means "gypsy woman." They had no filter and were said to be brutally harsh. Like the cigarettes, he relied on alcohol and tobacco his whole life, yet he created brilliant music and was cherished by all of France.

His best-known song is "Je t'aime... moi non plus," recorded and released in two versions, one with Brigitte Bardot and one with Jane Birkin. The title is ironic: in French it means "I love you... me neither." Among Gainsbourg's many gems, it is both controversial and hugely popular, and well worth a listen.

Gainsbourg worked tirelessly throughout his life and left behind a large body of songs, but in his final years he leaned heavily on alcohol and died of a heart attack in 1991. François Mitterrand, then president of France, paid tribute by saying that France had lost "our Baudelaire and our Apollinaire." The house on Rue de Verneuil where he lived still receives countless love letters from fans, a sign of how deeply he was loved by the entire nation.