Serge Gainsbourg, Tomb in Montparnasse cemetery, Paris, France
The grave of Serge Gainsbourg is located in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, in the 14th arrondissement, in division 1, section 1. He rests there alongside his parents, Olga and Joseph Ginsburg, and the headstone is almost always covered with objects left by visitors.
Gainsbourg, born in 1928 as Lucien Ginsburg, started his music career after the Second World War, having first wanted to become a painter. He died in March 1991 from a heart attack and was buried a few days later at Montparnasse cemetery, in the presence of many friends and fellow artists.
Fans regularly leave cigarettes, metro tickets, bottles of Ricard or whisky, and handwritten notes on the grave as personal tributes. The metro tickets are a direct reference to his first well-known song from 1958, which told the story of a ticket puncher in a Paris subway station.
The grave is easy to find using the free map available at the cemetery entrance, as it is listed under the letter G in the Gs section for Gainsbourg Serge. The cemetery is open throughout the year, and the nearest metro stations are Raspail and Gaîté.
Every March 2, the anniversary of his death, fans gather at the grave to pay tribute, and at his funeral Catherine Deneuve read a passage from the song Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve. This detail is unknown to many visitors, even though it shows how closely he was connected to the French film world.
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