TOULOUSE
Plans for a central cemetery were first drawn up in the early 1830s with the aim of gathering together the remains lying in various cemeteries across the town centre. The project was entrusted to the town’s young chief architect, Urbain Vitry.
It was on the Terre-Cabade hillside that he envisaged a cemetery featuring an English-style garden and beautiful, shaded paths. Opened in 1840, the cemetery gradually expanded until it reached its current size of 33 hectares. Now an aesthetic hallmark of the Marengo district, its entrance is magnificent, adorned with neo-Egyptian obelisks built of brick and embellished with gilding. It has become the cemetery for all the people of Toulouse.
Often referred to as Toulouse’s ‘Père Lachaise’, this tour introduces you to the sometimes theatrical, yet always dignified and moving, architecture of funerary art. It also recounts the remarkable stories of Toulouse residents, both famous and unknown, such as Léontine de Villeneuve, known as ‘L’Occitanienne’, Chateaubriand’s muse, or ‘Saint Helena’, as well as the moving story of the ‘quadrangle of the drowned’.
