Albert Camus

In a remote cemetery on the outskirts of the quiet village of Lourmarin, Provence, is the final resting place of author Albert Camus.

Nobel prize winning author Albert Camus is one of the greatest French writers and philosophers of the 20th century. In 1958 he bought a house with the Nobel prize money in the sleepy French town of Lourmarin.

He, his wife and two boys loved the town and he became deeply involved with the Lourmarin football team.  They still play today on a simple field overlooked by the town’s chateau.  Sadly, (in 1960) he was killed in a car accident. He was only 47.

In 2009 French President Sarkozy initiated plans to have Camus exhumed and reinterred at the Pantheon in Paris, the last resting place of such illustrious French names as Victor Hugo, Rosseau, Saint-Exupery and Voltaire.

However the plans never came to fruition because Camus' son declined the offer. He knew that his dad, despite his stature in French culture, would choose to stay put with a simple-carved gravestone telling where he was.  

Camus remains buried in the town he so loved and where his wife now has joined him ... both coffins having been lovingly carried by the players of the village football club.