Benoît Gallot balances the needs of the city with those beating a path to legends such as Oscar Wilde at Père-Lachaise
Benoît Gallot, curator of Paris’s Père-Lachaise cemetery, would like to lay a particular urban myth to rest: no, he is not using the testicles from the sphinx on Oscar Wilde’s tomb as a paperweight.
The stone genitals, allegedly removed from the mythical creature by two puritanical English women shocked by their size and prominence, were long reported to have been saved and put to office use by successive cemetery staff. According to Gallot, the story is utter balls.
