The Cimetière du Montparnasse is a famous cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, France. It is in the 14ème arrondissement.
Created from three farms in 1824, the Montparnasse cemetery was originally known as Le Cimetière du Sud. Cemeteries had been banned from Paris since the shutting down of the Cimetière des Innocents in 1786 on the fringe of Les Halles food market on the grounds that it presented a health hazard. Several new cemeteries outside of the precincts of the capital replaced all the Parisian ones in the early 19th century, Cimetière de Montmartre in the north, Le Cimetière Père Lachaise in the east and Cimetière du Montparnasse in the south. At the heart of the city, and today, sitting in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is Cimetière de Passy.
Montparnasse Cemetery is the eternal home of many of France's intellectual and artistic elite as well as publishers and others who promoted the works of writers and artists. There are also monuments to police and firefighters killed in the line of duty in the city of Paris.
Because of the many notable people buried there, it is a highly popular tourist attraction.
Among the people buried here are:
• Alexandre Alekhine, Russian-born chess world champion
• Jean-Michel Atlan, poet and painter
• Georges Auric, composer, member of Les Six
• Frédéric Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty
• Jane Bathori, opera singer
• Charles Baudelaire
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau, painter
• Antoine Bourdelle, sculptor
• Samuel Beckett, Irish writer
• Simone de Beauvoir, feminist philosopher
• Constantin Brancusi, sculptor
• Brassaï, photographer
• Jean Carmet, actor
• André Citroën automobile manufacturer
• Jules Dalou, sculptor
• Robert Desnos, poet
• Alfred Dreyfus, military officer
• Jules Dumont d'Urville, explorer
• Henri Fantin-Latour, painter
• Léon-Paul Fargue, poet and essayist
• César Franck, composer
• Charles Garnier, builder of the Paris Opera
• Serge Gainsbourg, poet and singer
• François Gérard, painter
• Jean Antoine Houdon, sculptor
• Joris-Karl Huysmans, writer
• Eugène Ionesco, playwright
• Pierre Larousse, French author of a well-known dictionary
• Henri Laurens sculptor, engraver
• Guy de Maupassant, writer
• Simon Petlyura, Ukrainian leader
• Jean Pierre Rampal, Flutist
• Man Ray, photographer
• François Rude, sculptor
• Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, literary critic, author
• Camille Saint-Saens, composer
• Georges Sand, writer
• Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher
• Jean Seberg, American actress
• Tristan Tzara, poet and essayist
• Ossip Zadkine, Russian-born sculptor