Biography | Pablo Picasso — The Terrace at Vauvenargues Where the Coffin Went into the Rock

Picasso died on the morning of 8 April 1973 at the Mas Notre-Dame-de-Vie in Mougins, above Cannes. He was 91. The local physician recorded pulmonary oedema. Mougins would not allow a burial on that estate. Jacqueline Roque chose instead the Château de Vauvenargues, north of Montagne Sainte-Victoire, which Picasso had bought in 1958 and occupied with her from 1959 to 1961. The coffin was brought the sixty miles from Mougins and laid in the chapel under a tower until the grave was cut. On the afternoon of 16 April 1973 a small group stood on the terrace in front of the main door. The New York Times, reporting from Paris the same day, said the mahogany coffin was slid into a cavity cut in the rock a few yards from the entrance and covered with turf. Present were Jacqueline, his son Paulo, a handful of friends, four undertaker's men, and five municipal councillors from the village. There was no religious service. A sculpture of his own, Woman with a Vase (1933), was later set on the mound. The same figure had stood at the Spanish Pavilion in Paris in 1937, the building that first showed Guernica. Jacqueline was buried beside him in 1986. The château remains private property of her heirs. It is a listed historic monument. There is no regular public access to the grave or the interior. The village rejected a museum scheme years ago. A visitor can see the walls and the terrace from the public road in Vauvenargues. Do not treat the pin as an invitation onto the grounds. The last chapter is here because this is where the body was placed, not because the house is open. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons