I wonder who's kissing Oscar now?

 Everyone (almost) who visits Paris journeys to Pere Lachaise cemetery. So did we on Sunday.

Pere Lachaise occupies several acres of hilly real estate in the 20th. It's not the expected (by me, anyway) cemetery of green grass and headstones. Every square centimeter of earth is occupied with one tomb side-to-side or toe-to-toe with the next. Its population density equals the living Paris that surrounds it. It was, and is, fashionable for the bourgousie of Paris to inter their dead in Pere Lachaise. The tombs are not large and not beautiful, but they are massive, stolid, and definitely built to last.

In amongst the mansions of the rich are the tombs of the artists, composers, writers that make Pere Lachaise a principle tourist site. Evidently enticing the families of famous artists to inter their loved ones in Pere Lachaise was a marketing ploy adopted by the cemetery's originators. Or, reinterring same, as in the case of Moliere or the infamous Marat of French Revolution fame. Chopin, Bizet, Proust, and Victor Hugo rest here. Even Baron Haussmann, the architect of the great transformation of Paris in the 19th century, is entombed at Pere Lachaise.

There are no signs to help you locate individual tombs, only a vague map given out by the Mairie of Paris. Jim Morrison, for example, is not easy to find, although a clump of young tourists helps pinpoint the site. You have to hop around several tombs to get a clear view. His tomb is pretty nondescript with a few flowers, both artificial and real, scattered over the top. The visitors seem awfully young. I see no evidence of the adoring crowds (or supposed orgies) that once came or took place here. I suppose to today's young Morrison is just a famous guy who died a long time ago. Piaf's grave is similarly nondescript, but she commands a larger crowd and more flowers. Of course, she's also easier to find.

I really wanted to see Oscar Wilde's tomb. It's at the top of the cemetery, near the Gambetta gate. Wilde died in 1900 in a seedy Paris hotel and was originally interred in the Bagneux cemetery--essentially a pauper's grave. Two years later a friend had him dug up and reburied at Pere Lachaise. The tomb is a rectangular plinth with a strange (art deco? Egyptian? Mayan?) male angel flying along its side. (You can look up the stories about what supposedly happened to this male angel on moonless nights. I'm not going to tell you.) But strangest of all are the thousands of red kisses that cover the tomb--at least up as far as can reasonably be reached. Why? No one seems to know. It seems someone started the tradition and others just followed on. Wilde's grandson, who pays for the upkeep of the tomb, hates it, especially as the oil from the lipstick penetrates the stone and can't be removed.

I wonder what Wilde would think of all those kisses.