Montparnasse Cemetery

Montparnasse Cemetery is defined by a silent, nineteen-hectare grid of paths lined with over thirty-five thousand graves, sitting in the shadow of the nearby high-rise tower. It opened in eighteen twenty-four as the Cimetière du Midi to serve the southern districts of Paris, replacing older, congested burial grounds within the city center. The land once held three farms and a seventeenth-century stone windmill, which still stands today near the center of the grounds as the only physical remnant of the area's agricultural past.