Within the last decade, I have discovered a new hobby: cemetery walking which makes me a taphophile. This has taken me to many spots (though not yet international travel for it) around the area and in other states– it might be a quick stroll or it might be an early morning intensive. I’ve completed a cemetery crawl. I read books about them. And this past week, I finished a four week course on cemetery symbolism. Excitingly, I had signed up for the course before realizing that the book Grave from the series Object Lessons was written by the same person that would be running it. Needless to say, I knew I was going to nerd out. And nerd out I did.

And one cemetery that came up often in the discussions was Pere-Lachaise. It’s basically the mecca of cemeteries so imagine my excitement when I received a copy of the book The Secret Life of a Cemetery: The Wild Nature and Enchanting Lore of Pere-Lachaise by Benoit Gallot. This insightful mix of biography of Gallot’s residence inside Pere-Lachaise as an administrator (where he both works and raises his family on premises), cemetery history, and homage to the ecosystem that exists inside this one, and others, if you choose to see it. What started with a picture of a kit fox walking the grounds on his social media became the book about more than just the fox.

It’s a call to taphophiles like me to book travel to Paris and spend all my time walking the 110 acres.