Paris Lottery Offers Burial Plots Near Jim Morrison

No one here gets out alive, as Jim Morrison once reminded us, but maybe you can get a little closer to rock and roll eternity. Paris is offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: a chance to win a burial plot near the final resting places of Jim Morrison, the Lizard King himself, and literary legend Oscar Wilde. It is the ultimate afterlife upgrade, a chance to share eternal real estate with two of history’s most rebellious spirits. Forget breaking on through to the other side; this might just light up your odds of immortality.

People are strange when it comes to their obsession with celebrity, but a Paris cemetery is counting on that fascination. The city hopes the most devoted fans will pay handsomely for the privilege of lying eternally beside their idols, a final encore in the company of greatness.

The legendary Père Lachaise Cemetery is already home to some of history and pop culture’s most iconic names, including Jim Morrison of The Doors, the poetic soul who called himself Mr. Mojo Risin, writer Oscar Wilde, singer Edith Piaf, novelist Marcel Proust, and composer Frédéric Chopin. Now, the organization managing this historic resting place is giving the public a rare chance to join them. Lottery winners could secure burial plots in Père Lachaise or other famous Parisian cemeteries such as Montparnasse, the final home to Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, singer Serge Gainsbourg, and actress Jane Birkin, whose ashes were recently interred there. Montmartre also serves as the resting place of impressionist painter Edgar Degas, writer Émile Zola, and French New Wave filmmaker François Truffaut.

There is no suggestion that any of these famous monuments is available through the new scheme. The 30 gravestones being offered, many now weathered and without readable inscriptions, date back to the 19th century.

In a city where art, rebellion, and romance never die, this new initiative lets a few lucky souls join the eternal Parisian pantheon, perhaps close enough to feel Jim Morrison’s spirit still rising.

The city of Paris has launched a lottery to help restore historic funerary monuments in its overcrowded cemeteries: Père Lachaise, Montparnasse, and Montmartre. Gravestones in need of restoration at each cemetery are being offered for around €4,000 each, with the condition that buyers finance the repairs and, in return, acquire a burial plot beside them.

According to the Paris council, the plan “strikes a balance” between honoring the deceased and giving residents a rare opportunity to rest eternally within the city’s most hallowed grounds.