Chapelle expiatoire
The Chapelle expiatoire (Atonement Chapel ) is a chapel in the 8th arrondissement of Paris . It was commissioned by Louis XVIII. built on the site of the former Madeleine cemetery ( Cimetière de la Madeleine ). It is a memorial to Louis XVI. and his wife Marie-Antoinette , who were buried in the cemetery before it had to give way and their bodies were exhumed over 21 years after the burial and reburied in the basilica of Saint-Denis .
history
Louis XVI , who was executed on January 21, 1793. and Marie-Antoinette, who was also executed on October 16, 1793, were buried in the Madeleine cemetery, as were over 3,000 other victims of the French Revolution .
On June 3, 1802, the land of the cemetery was bought by Pierre-Louis Olivier Desclozeaux, who had lived nearby since 1789. He marked the place where the royal couple was buried with a hedge, two willows and a cypress .
In the course of the restoration , the Duchess of Angoulême Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon , the couple's first-born daughter , asked her uncle King Louis XVIII. to search for the corpses. Her bones were exhumed on January 18 and 19, 1815 and taken to the Saint-Denis basilica.
On January 11, 1816 Desclozeaux sold the house and the former cemetery to Louis XVIII, who provided the cost of 3 million livres for the construction of the Chapelle expiatoire. The construction took 10 years, the inauguration took place in 1826. The altar in the crypt marks the exact location of the former burial place of Louis XVI. The chapel has been surrounded by the park-like area of Square Louis XVI since 1865 .
architecture
The building was designed by the architect Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine and his pupil Louis-Hippolyte Lebas in 1816. Charles Percier , who is occasionally referred to as an architect and a close confidante of Fontaine, had already ended his career in 1804.
With an entrance pavilion and two side galleries, the chapel forms an overall complex that includes an inner garden. This inner courtyard is well above the ground level of the surrounding park of Square Louis XVI, as the excavated material from the construction, including the bones from the times of the mass grave, was deposited here. Symbolic gravestones on the walls of the side galleries facing the inner courtyard are reminiscent of the Swiss Guards who were killed when Louis XVI was captured. were killed in the Tuileries .
Inside the chapel there are statues of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinettes in white marble. Louis XVI is depicted kneeling, supported by an angel. This group of sculptures comes from the sculptor François Joseph Bosio . MariexAntoinette can also be seen kneeling. She looks up to a female figure who symbolizes religion. The creator of this group of figures is the sculptor Jean-Pierre Cortot . Both marble statues were financed by Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon, the daughter of the royal couple. The king's will and the last letter from his wife to her sister-in-law are engraved on their pedestals.
literature
- Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos: Le Guide du Patrimoine: Paris . Hachette, Paris 1994, p. 160, with plan and elevation. ISBN 978-2-01-016812-3
Web links
- Chapelle expiatoire (Paris) in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- Les Goncourt et Marie-Antoinette (French)
Coordinates: 48 ° 52 ′ 25 ″ N , 2 ° 19 ′ 22 ″ E