[2][3] The cemetery is the resting place for a variety of individuals including political figures, philosophers, artists, actors, and writers.

In the 16th century the intersecting roads of Vavin and Raspail were dump areas for rubble and stones from nearby quarries.

Montparnasse as well as Père Lachaise and Montmartre replaced the Cimetière des Innocents (those buried here were relocated to the Catacombs).

[3] In the 17th century the future location of the cemetery consisted of three farms that belonged to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital and an estate of the Brothers of Charity (frères de la Charité).

Within the cemetery one can find a variety of trees including linden, Japanese pagoda, thuja, maple, ash, and conifers.

This work is a single block of ultra high performance concrete and optical fibers composed of 12 sides to materialize the electron de-multiplier cell invented by the client.

There are graves of foreigners who made France their home as well as monuments to police and firefighters killed in the line of duty.

Adolphe Crémieux, French lawyer and politician, gained citizenship for Jews in French-ruled Algeria in 1870.

Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew, is buried in the south of the cemetery and is known for being unjustly accused and tried for treason, an event that divided France at the turn of the century.

Visitors leave a variety of gifts on his gravesite, ranging from flowers and metro tickets to cabbages.

[10] Duras moved to Indochina as a child with her parents, but was sent back to France before the beginning of World War II.

Their bodies rest under the quote, "On n'emporte en mourant que ce que l'on a donné" (We can only take in death what we have given away) The cemetery does not have a monument dedicated to those who died during World War I.