Paris launches lottery for burial plots subsequent to well-known stars like Doors’ Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde
Are you dead keen on joining Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde for all eternity? Well now’s your chance – as long as you don’t mind moving to over to Paris
Paris is offering people the chance to win a burial spot among some of history’s most iconic names — including Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Council chiefs launched the unusual scheme due to so many people expressing interest in the city’s famous cemeteries.
They declared the macabre lottery a ‘compromise’ between respecting the dead while also giving living locals the chance to nab a burial spot in some of the world’s most famous cemeteries, including Pere-Lachaise, Montparnasse and Montmartre, the resting places of rock gods, literary giants and cultural icons.
Thirty crumbling gravestones from way back in the 19th century are up for grabs for €4,000 (£3,500) each. However, there’s a small catch that might deter some people.
The lucky winners have to fork out to restore the monuments and then buy a burial plot next to them. Basically, you’re paying to become neighbours with the dead.
Paris City Hall says the scheme is a “compromise” between preserving the city’s heritage and helping locals find a final resting place. As well as A-list afterlife residents Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Piaf, there is also the novelist Marcel Proust and composer Frederic Chopin.
While over at Montparnasse, you’ll find philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir along with poet Charles Baudelaire and write Samuel Beckett. Elsewhere, Montmartre houses icons such as painter Edgar Degas, filmmaker Francois Truffaut and writer Emile Zola.
Don’t get too excited though as none of their graves are up for sale. The ones on offer are more “vintage chic” than celebrity shrine, many with worn-down inscriptions and in serious need of some TLC.
Only people living in Paris can enter the morbid draw, which will take place this January, reports the BBC. The council stated that the opportunity, “offers ‘a compromise’ between preserving funerary heritage and giving residents of the capital the opportunity to establish their burial site in Paris itself, rather than in its cemeteries outside the city walls.”
Winners then have six months to fix up their chosen tomb, keeping the design “faithful to the original.” Failure to do so though means you’ll lose both your cash and your creepy new property.
If a burial lease expires with no renewal then the plot can be resold and reused. And with leases starting at just under a grand for 10 years and soaring to €17,668 (£15,500) for perpetuity, they could end up becoming some of the most sought-after real estate in France.
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