Cimetière de Bercy, Urban cemetery in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, France
The cimetière de Bercy is a small urban cemetery in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, located at the corner of Rue de Charenton and Avenue du Général-Michel-Bizot. It holds over a thousand graves arranged around a central chapel, with old trees lining the stone paths.
The residents of Bercy were buried from 1643, at first on the Sainte-Marguerite cemetery. The current site opened in 1816 and was absorbed into Paris in 1860, when Bercy was annexed to the city.
The entrance gate carries stone-carved hourglasses, an old symbol of time passing. A grapevine grows along the entrance wall, a quiet reminder of the wine trade that once shaped this part of the city.
The cemetery is easy to reach by metro line 8 or tram line 3a, at the Porte de Charenton stop. Some paths may be harder to navigate for visitors with reduced mobility, as the site dates back to the early 19th century.
A peach tree has grown out of one of the graves and can still be seen today. During the Semaine sanglante in 1871, bodies of people shot during the Paris Commune were thrown into a well on the grounds, without any formal burial.
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