With the advent of autumn and the arrival of All Saints, an inevitable visit to Paris is its visit. cemeteries. The French capital is leaking history and even burial sites everywhere. they are more familiar Pere Lachaise monument —with the graves of Molière, Balzac, Proust, Jim Morrison…— or MontparnasseWhere Baudelaire, Cortázar or Simone de Beauvoir slept among other celebrities. However, there are others, many of them unknown to the French, even those that reflect important historical moments.
This situation picpusonly guillotine cemetery during French Revolution (1789-1794) can be visited in the capital. Located at 35 Rue Picpus, near the Place de la Nation (east of Paris), this hidden place is More than 1300 people were executed -197 women – From June 14 to July 27, 1794, one of the periods when the guillotine was in full swing during the Shocking Revolution.
Whose tomb is the most famous? of the Marquess de LafayetteLeading general and member of the faction during the American Revolution Girondins (moderate Republicans). Interestingly, Lafayette survived the revolutionary era and her body lies there as part of the family of one of the guillotines.
More than 2,490 people were executed by guillotine in Paris
To visit Picpus, one enters through the wooden door of a plain building in the middle of old office blocks. First he sees a small church in classical style. It was the monastery of the canonical nuns of San Agustín, expelled from there in 1792 and excavations were carried out behind it. two of the pits Those executed during the revolution.
in total 2,498 people were executed by guillotine In Paris during the revolution. The guillotine, which ‘humanized’ the death penalty by reducing it to a single sharp line, was found in seven places in the capital. But the most important were three: revolution squarerenamed Concordia ten years after seven name changes, Bastille Square and square of the fallen throne, currently a small square next to Ulus. Each had their own mass graves.
Those who were guillotined in the overthrown Throne square were buried in Picpus. To reach the mass graves, one walks along a path made of soil and fallen leaves. Before reaching the entrance of the cemetery, the visitor is greeted by a group of chickens in the city gardens as a reflection of current fashion. Four rows and less than a hundred tombs make up the traditional part of the cemetery. In the background, a door with a blue grille separates the visitor from the place, which justifies paying the modest two-euro entrance fee. There, in front of the two stone tombstones with a cross on them, there are two plates indicating the presence of the tombstone. hole number 1 and hole number 2.
nobles’ cemetery
they buried it there 1,306 guillotine On the Square of the Overturned Throne. Among them, its members high aristocracy Like the Rochefoucuald, Montalembert, Montmorency, Noailles or Grimaldi families. But there are also figures without noble titles, such as the poet André Chénier, immortalized in Giordano’s opera. Josephine (later Napoleon’s wife) or Leonard, Marie Antoinette’s hairdresser. The testimonies of that period state that they were buried naked, face down, and in groups of 10 or 12 people. For this reason, they were not exhumed.
Amélie, Saxon princess of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringenbought the land in 1797, where his older brother is buried there. Since then, one of the few private cemeteries in Paris and basically relatives of guillotine nobles. In the conventional part, there is a succession of small mausoleums, extremely weathered tombs from the early 19th century, and others with shiny 21st-century material. Compound surnames appear in many of them.
This is a unknown place for many Parisians. So much so that this journalist came across only three visitors during his more than two-hour visit in one afternoon in October. In addition to the tombs, another attraction center is Hz. Lafayetteunder american flag that floated over it and was never exiled even during the Nazi occupation. The dollar coins and numerous metal emblems on this tomb give it an aura similar to many cemeteries on the East Coast of the United States where heroes of the American Revolution are venerated.
While the ruins of Lafayette are preserved with all honor, the Jacobins (or mountains) Robespierre, Saint-Just or Danton, is not taken into account. All were executed by guillotine and were buried in the most important mass grave of revolutionary Paris, circulating. The only trace of it remains is a plaque found next to a bakery in one of the capital’s most elegant quarters. All are a reflection of the hard to digest French official account of his revolutionary legacy.