Chapelle Expiatoire

This “Chapel of Atonement” stands on the site of one of the more curious eternal resting places in all of Paris, the Madeleine Cemetery. The remains of its star tenants, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, are no longer located here, having been exhumed and removed from the site 21 years after their deaths by guillotine. In January, 1793, the body of King Louis XVI was hauled from the Place de la Concorde (where the guillotine was installed) to the Madeleine Cemetery, where his headless corpse was dumped into a mass grave and covered with quicklime. Nine months later the same fate befell the queen.

The Chapelle Expiatoire, whose construction was completed in 1826, is a royalist mausoleum built upon the grounds of that former cemetery. The site, located within the tranquil Square Louis XVI, on the south side of Boulevard Haussmann, includes this Greco-Roman necropolis, as well as an entry building designed in Neoclassic style.

The cemetery dates back to 1720, when it served as the new burial grounds of the parish of Sainte Madeleine (located a few blocks to the south), whose original cemetery had outgrown its capacity. Over the next eighty years more than three thousand bodies were interred here, most of them victims of the French Revolution, buried in mass graves.

Ironically, in 1770, the Madeleine Cemetery was used to bury 133 people who were killed in an accident resulting from a fireworks display during the wedding of the dauphin, Louis (the future king Louis XVI), and his Austrian wife, Marie Antoinette. On August 10, 1792, several hundred members of the Swiss Guard were slaughtered while making a heroic stand to protect the Tuileries Palace from a revolutionary mob. Their resistance allowed the King and Queen to escape to Versailles. All the bodies of the Swiss guardsmen were buried in the Madeleine Cemetery.

In 1802 the land in which the bodies lay was bought by Pierre-Louis Olivier Desclozeaux, a royalist lawyer who had lived adjacent to the cemetery since 1789. He had taken note of the sites where the King and Queen were buried and marked them with a hedge and several trees. In 1816, just after the bodies of the former king and queen were removed to St. Denis, Desclozeaux sold his house and the old cemetery to Louis XVIII, who shared the expense of building the Chapelle Expiatoire with his niece, the Duchess of Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The Chapelle Expiatoire complex is entered through an entry hall that leads to a large enclosed courtyard planted with roses and flanked with grave markers in remembrance of the dead. Beyond that, the domed Chapel of Atonement is reached by climbing a set of stairs and passing through a facade supported by Doric columns. Above the entrance is a bas-relief sculpture commemorating the exhumation and procession of the remains of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to the Basilica of St. Denis (north of the city), the traditional repository of the remains of French royals.

A marble altar is centered along the back wall, and two marble statues stand to either side. To the left is Marie Antoinette “supported by Religion,” the work of Jean Pierre Cortot. To the right is the sculpture by Françoise Bosio which depicts Louis XVI ascending to heaven with the help of an angel. A crypt, accessed by stairs behind each statue, contains a black coffin that marks the original location of the bodies of the king and queen.

In addition to the royals, other notables who met their destiny in 1793 are commemorated at this site. Mme. Du Barry, mistress of King Louis VX, also fell victim to the guillotine. It is noted that she displayed none of the dignity of the king and queen; instead, her approach to the scaffold was hysterical, screaming and begging for mercy. Her remains were also later removed from the Madeleine Cemetery. The Bourbon Duc d’Orléans, cousin of the king, changed his name to Philippe Egalité and cast a vote for the execution of the king, but this did not prevent him from meeting the same fate. However, unlike Mme. Du Barry, eyewitnesses commented upon his courage and dignity in approaching the guillotine. Also interred here was Charlotte Corday, who was led to the scaffold just four days after she murdered Jean Paul Marat, whose incendiary writings she blamed for most of the terrors of the revolution.

The Chapelle Expiatoire complex combines history, art and architecture in an oasis of quiet from the activity of the surrounding city. It serves as the only monument to the French Revolution that is religious in nature.

Along the garden perimeter, symmetrical arcades commemorate the hundreds of members of the Swiss Guard who lost their lives defending the Tuileries Palace in 1792.

Chapelle Expiatoire
29, rue Pasquier – Square Louis XVI
Open Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays 1-5 pm; entrance fee 5 Euros (free to holders of the Paris Museum Pass)
Closed January 1, May 1, November 1, November 11, December 25.
http://chapelle-expiatoire.monuments-nationaux.fr/en/
Métro: St-Augustin

Palais Royal

Cardinal de Richelieu, the chief minister to Louis XIII, bought the old Hôtel Rambouillet and its surrounding properties in 1624, removed the buildings and built a magnificent residence and adjacent garden, known as the Palais Cardinal. Part of the complex was a theatre, commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu in 1641, and it was here that Molière produced his plays from 1660-1673. When Richelieu died in 1642, he bequeathed the entire estate to the crown.

Anne of Austria, regent of France after the death of her husband, Louis XIII, moved here from the Louvre and raised her family, which included her son, the future Louis XIV, who came to be known as the Sun King. From this point in time the structure and garden were called the Palais Royal. Louis XIV, having grown up here, eventually gave title of the Palais Royal to his brother, the Duc d’Orléans, and his family lived here until the Revolution of 1789.

In 1781, the Duc d'Orléans, later known as Philippe-Egalitié (who owned and developed the Parc de Monceau), enlarged the palace and shrank the garden, allowing for the construction of residences with regular arcaded facades on three sides of the garden. These modifications was completed in 1784. To offset construction expenses, the Duc d'Orléans built boutiques under the arcades and rented them out, opening the Jardin du Palais Royal to the public. However, he still considered the space private property and barred the police from any authority over it. It thereby became a place of liberty not found anywhere else in Paris, a gathering place for intellectuals and artists – and eventually gambling houses and prostitutes.

In 1786 a cannon was set up on the prime meridian of Paris (which bisects the garden), in which the sun’s noon rays, concentrated by passing through a glass lens, ignited the cannon’s fuse. Firing this “noon cannon” was resumed in 1990.

By 1789, the Jardin du Palais Royal was the liveliest place in Paris. People came here to get the latest news and discuss political rumors. It was a place of speeches, discussions, drinking and gaming.

On July 12th, 1789, Camille Desmoulins, a young lawyer, jumped on a table inside the Café de Foy and broke the news that Jacques Necker, the popular Minister of State, had been forced to resign. Desmoulins called out, "Aux armes, citoyens!" (To arms, citizens!). Two days later, the Bastille was taken, and the French Revolution was underway.

Subsequently the Palais Royal and its garden became property of the State. Today the Ministry of Culture has offices here, and the Comédie-Française theatre still produces the plays of Molière and Racine. The more intimate Théâtre du Palais Royal is also housed in this complex.


The garden retains its colonnaded arcades. The historic mosaics remain, fronting shops, galleries, restaurants and cafés, although the restaurant Le Grand Véfour is the only remaining establishment from the garden's pre-Revolutionary days. The garden, devoid of motorized traffic, offers a pleasant respite from the city’s clamor. Grassy lawns, rows of chestnut trees, sculptures, flowers and a fountain delight modern visitors, who can rest in peace on the shaded benches. A further enticement is that dogs are banned.



The paved courtyard of the Court of Honor is now home to a major work of modern sculpture, a set of 260 striped black and white columns of unequal height. The work of artist Daniel Buren, the columns were installed here among much controversy in 1986 (the State even tried to rescind its contract with the designer). The Orleans gallery, which separates the courtyard from the gardens, is where Belgian artist Paul Bury created sunken fountains and his sculpture of large reflective metal spheres. Chacun à son goût.

JARDIN DU PALAIS ROYAL
Gardens 7:00a-11:00p June-July-August; until 8:30p other months.
Métro: Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre