In the shadow of the Tour Montparnasse, this debris-littered cemetery is a burial ground of yesterday's celebrities. A map to the left of the main gateway will direct you to the gravesite of its most famous couple, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Others resting here include Samuel Beckett; Guy de Maupassant; Pierre Larousse (famous for his dictionary); Capt. Alfred Dreyfus; auto tycoon André Citroën; sculptors Ossip Zadkine and Constantin Brancusi; actress Jean Seberg; composer Camille Saint-Saëns; photographer Man Ray; and poet Charles Baudelaire, who'd already written about "plunging into the abyss, Heaven or Hell." In 2005, the cemetery interred the remains of American intellectual and activist Susan Sontag, who wanted to be buried in the same cemetery as some of her favorite writers.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Paris 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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