This famous composer is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris but his heart is far from here

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“Chopin passed among us like a ghost”. Liszt thus summarized his thoughts concerning his friend, who died in Paris on October 17, 1849, at only 39 years old. In fragile health, the composer died at Place Vendôme before being buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (division 11) after a ceremony at the Madeleine, to the sounds of his famous Funeral March and Mozart's Requiem. His tomb, one of the most famous in the Parisian cemetery, is topped by a statue, the work of Auguste Clésinger, son-in-law of George Sandwith whom the virtuoso maintained a tumultuous relationship. But if Chopin's remains are there, his heart is very far from Paris.

Chopin never returned to Poland

The prodigy's heart is 1,500 kilometers from his body, preserved in cognac in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw. In accordance with his last wishes, his older sister Ludwika brought his heart back to Warsaw, which is in a cenotaph embedded in a pillar of the church. Thus the Capetian tradition of the bipartition of the body and the double burial is reproduced.

A choice which much later allowed researchers to know the reasons for the death of the man George Sand called “my dear corpse”. The artist's death was attributed to tuberculosis – although without certainty – until Polish medical experts raised the hypothesis in 2008 according to which Chopin had in fact suffered from cystic fibrosis.

In 2017, Polish researchers were able to examine Chopin's heart, preserved for 168 years, using modern techniques. After analysis, “we can say that it is highly probable that it was tuberculosis”, then indicated Professor Michal Witt, specialist in molecular genetics. “Lesions are clearly visible on Chopin's pericardium,” the doctor said, describing the condition of the outer membrane of the heart generally affected by changes caused by tuberculosis, and they “correspond well to the initial diagnosis (…) of tuberculosis.

He concluded: “the possibility that it was tuberculosis rather than cystic fibrosis is by far stronger, although we cannot prove it with certainty.”

Born in Zelazowa Wola near Warsaw in 1810, Chopin composed most of his works in France, his father's country, where he emigrated after the Polish uprising of 1830-31 against Russia, which had shared the Poland at the end of the 18th century with Prussia and Austria.

As he had refused the Russian passport, Chopin was never able to return to his native country, that of his mother.

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