Tag: Marie Antoinette

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The Rumble of the Tumbrel

As you know, the title of one of my books will be “Where Did They Put the Guillotine?” It’s about buildings, places, sites and people significant to the French Revolution. I’ll take you on walking tours of Paris and show you these sites. One of the walking tours will be entitled: “The Rumble of the Tumbrel: Marie Antoinette’s Last Ride.”

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The steps leading up to the Cour du Mai where the carts would wait for the prisoners (photo by Dan Owen)

So on our recent trip to Paris, we decided to walk the exact route that Marie Antoinette’s tumbrel (i.e., cart) took to the guillotine.

We began at the Conciergerie, the former medieval palace turned prison. Prisoners were brought here from other prisons scattered around Paris. This was their last stop before getting into the tumbrels that would take them to the guillotine. A typical stay was one or two nights. Marie Antoinette was an exception as she spent over two months in this prison. Once the bell rang (it is still there), the condemned prisoners would congregate in the “Corner of the Twelve” before being loaded into the carts (each cart could hold twelve people ergo the name of the segregated courtyard).

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Paris Catacombs

One of my blog posts was about visiting dead people in cemeteries and church crypts. I neglected to tell you about the real fun trip we had visiting the dead in a place you’d never imagine. We went to visit the six million dead people whose bones are stacked up in 186 miles of limestone caverns (or quarries as they call them here) located 29 meters below the streets of Paris. It is the ossuary called the Catacombs of Paris.

You talk about creepy. Here are all these bones and skulls stacked neatly in rows. Sometimes they are arranged to make a statement to the visitor. Sometimes there are piles like the wheelbarrow just dumped them from their original cemeteries.

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Dan at Paris Catacombs

By the end of the 12th century, extraction of limestone building materials began beneath the streets of Paris. The citizens of Paris were reminded of these caverns in the mid-1700’s when sinkholes would occur. A large (quarter of a mile long) sinkhole happened a week before Christmas 1774. The king appointed Charles-Axel Guillaumot (1730-1807) as Inspector of the Quarries, a title he would hold until his death.

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