Mur des Fédérés

The Mur des Fédérés is a section of rough masonry wall located in the southeastern corner of the Père Lachaise Cemetery. It marks the site where the final resistance of the Paris Commune ended during the last days of May eighteen seventy-one. After intense fighting among the cemetery tombs, French government troops captured one hundred and forty-seven Commune soldiers and officers, lining them against this wall and executing them by firing squad. The victims were buried in a mass grave at the foot of the wall, alongside hundreds of others who perished during the week of brutal urban conflict known as the Semaine Sanglante.