Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Chartreuse cemetery, located in Bordeaux, is the oldest and largest in the city with an area of 25.7 hectares. It was built at the end of the 18th century on the old gardens of the Chartreux convent, in a former marshy area. In 1610, Cardinal-Archbishop François de Sourdis began to dry up the marshes with the help of the Chartreux and built the Chartreuse Notre-Dame-de-Miséricorde, of which today only the entrance door to the cemetery remains. It is home to a wide variety of 19th-century funerary monuments, including pyramids and imposing vaults, reflecting the historic and artistic significance of the site.

The cemetery was classified as historical monuments on 8 April 1921. It also hosts the monument to the dead of Bougie (present-day Bejaia, Algeria), transferred around 1968. This monument, composed of twenty-four bronze plaques, pays tribute to the deaths of the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. Like the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the Chartreuse cemetery houses the graves of many personalities, including military personnel, artists, politicians and scientists, making it a place of major memory and cultural heritage.

Among those who are buried or honored are Marshal Alphonse d'Ornano, former mayor of Bordeaux, painter Francisco Goya (whose monument is dedicated to him), the conventional Charles-François Delacroix (father of Eugene Delacroix), as well as resistors such as Félix Jaquemet and Henri Labit, Companions of Liberation. The cemetery is also marked by the presence of local figures, such as mayors Gustave Curé and Jean-Fernand Audeguil, or artists such as painters Pierre Lacour and Maxime Lalanne. These graves and monuments bear witness to the historical and cultural richness of Bordeaux.

The site is served by the Bordeaux tram line A, with nearby stations such as Gaviniès and Police Hotel. The side door of the cemetery, a vestige of the old cartreuse, has been classified since 1921. This place, at the same time a space of recollection and visit, illustrates the urban and memorial evolution of Bordeaux since the seventeenth century.

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