Tag: Père Lachaise Cemetery

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Paris: Creepy Stuff

I’ve written about the Paris Catacombs in prior blog posts. That is probably the creepiest spot in Paris. But there are many other sites that we could slap the label of “creepy” onto. Remember the bar and jazz club that had the only 1792 model of a guillotine once on public display?

Well, one of the areas that we went to see had nothing to do with the French Revolution. In fact, this story started before the Revolution and ended before World War One. It’s the story of two prisons constructed on a street that connected the Place de la Bastille and Père Lachaise Cemetery: rue de la Roquette.

There were once two prisons located where rue Croix-Faubin dead-ends into rue de la Roquette (11th district): la Grande Roquette and la Petit Roquette. The area was once a marsh filled with small purple-striped flowers called “wild roquette.” In 1639, the nuns of Notre-Dame-de-la-Charité built a small hospital here. During the French Revolution, the nuns were forced to abandon their site and it was turned into a spinning mill (the building can still be seen at 125 rue de la Roquette).

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Days of the Dead

We left Versailles early this morning (never really know about traffic) and got to the Paris flat by 8:15am. At 9:00am we were met by the owner and after an orientation and fixing some Wi-Fi issues, we were off on our first day in Paris (after a visit to the local supermarket).

Despite all of the pre-trip planning, once you get to the city, it seems to throw you off. So instead of following a particular preplanned walking tour, you find yourself chasing dead people. We ended up in three cemeteries, one ossuary, and a necropolis.

Royal tombs at Saint Denis in Paris, France.
Royal tombs at Saint Denis in Paris, France. (Photo by Dan Owen)

Our first stop was St. Denis Cathedral. This is the historic necropolis of the French monarchy. The first king, Clovis, is buried here as well as Saint Denis, patron saint. The original crypt dates back to 400. With the exception of two or three kings, every French king is buried here. Well, sort of. During the French Revolution, the revolutionaries suggested to the citizens that they destroy anything having to do with the monarchy. So beginning in 1793, the destruction began. One of the beneficiaries of these misguided actions were the remains of the kings and their families in St. Denis. The crypts and coffins were opened and the remains were either thrown into a large pit or the river. Not to despair because the bones were retrieved after the Revolution. Unfortunately, no one knew whom he or she belonged to. So they just gathered them all up and buried them behind a wall.

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