Cimetière de la Madeleine

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Chapelle expiatoire

The Cimètiere de la Madeleine is a former cemetery in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.

It was originally one of the cemeteries of the parish of the Sainte-Madeleine de la Ville-l'Évêque church and was laid out in 1720. There the 130 victims of the fireworks on the occasion of the wedding of Louis XVI. buried with Marie Antoinette in 1770.

During the French Revolution until March 1794, it served as a burial place for those who were guillotined on today's Place de la Concorde , including Louis XVI. (January 21, 1793) and Marie Antoinette (October 16, 1793). It is one of four cemeteries in Paris where the victims of the guillotine during the French Revolution were buried in mass graves, the others being the Cimetière de Picpus , the Cimetière des Errancis and the Cimetière de Sainte-Marguerite . On March 25, 1794, the cemetery was closed after complaints from residents about the smells. The property was sold to a stonemason. In 1816, Louis XVIII. build the Chapelle expiatoire in its place . It was on the corner of Rue d'Anjou and Grand Égout (later Boulevard Haussmann ).

The secretly royalist lawyer Olivier Desclozeaux (1732-1816) lived directly at the cemetery during the revolution and noted those buried there. As a result, he was able to give clues to the grave site of the royal couple in 1815, so that they could be transferred to the cathedral of Saint-Denis on January 21, 1815 . In 1802, Declozeaux purchased the land on which the cemetery was located.

In 1844 the skeletons were transferred to a municipal ossuary (Ossuaire de l'Ouest) and from there to the catacombs of Paris , where their location is indicated by a sign.

Bone storage of those buried in the Madeleine cemetery in the Paris Catacombs

The executed people buried here include the royal couple (with date of execution):

Such as:

literature

  • Jacques Hillairet: Les 200 cimetières du vieux Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1958

Web links