Madeleine Cemetery[1] (in French known asCimetière de la Madeleine) is a former cemetery in the8th arrondissement of Paris and was one of the four cemeteries (the others beingErrancis Cemetery,Picpus Cemetery and theCemetery of Saint Margaret) used to dispose of the corpses ofguillotine victims during theFrench Revolution. The cemetery was named afterMary Magdalene, known in French as Sainte-Madeleine.
In 1720, the parish ofSainte-Madeleine de la Ville-l’Évêque bought a piece of land of approximately 45x19m destined to become the third cemetery of the parish. It became known as the Madeleine Cemetery.[2]The cemetery was closed on 25 March 1794, reputedly because it was full, but maybe for sanitary reasons, as it was located in an affluent part of Paris.
Major interments were the 133 victims of the firework celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin (the futureLouis XVI) toMarie-Antoinette of Habsburg-Lorraine on 30 May 1770 and those of theSwiss Guards who were massacred in theTuileries,10 August 1792.
The day after the execution of the "Hébertists" the cemetery was closed and became private land. The beheaded corpses (victims of the guillotine) were then taken to what was to become theErrancis Cemetery (it remained open for three years but is now also gone).
The land was sold to a stonemason. On 3 June 1802, the land in which the bodies lay, was bought byPierre-Louis-Olivier Desclozeaux [fr;it], a royalist magistrate, who had lived adjacent to the cemetery (nowSquare Louis XVI)[3] since 1789. Desclozeaux had taken note of the sites where the King and Queen were buried and reputedly surrounded them with ahedge, twoweeping willows, andcypress trees.
On 11 January 1815, Desclozeaux sold his house and the old cemetery to Louis XVIII. One of the first decisions ofLouis XVIII, when he acceded to the throne of France at the time of theBourbon Restoration, was to move the remains of his brother and sister-in-law, KingLouis XVI and QueenMarie Antoinette, to theBasilica of St Denis, the necropolis of the Kings of France. They were exhumed on 18 and 19 January 1815, and moved to Saint-Denis Basilica on 20 January. Marie Antoinette's remains were identified by a garter and a jaw, which an eyewitness identified as being the queen's, based on having seen her smile over thirty years before.[4] Louis XVIII also searched for the remains of his sisterÉlisabeth in theErrancis Cemetery, but to no avail.
In 1844, the cemetery was cleared and the skeletal remains were transferred to thel'Ossuaire de l'Ouest (West Ossuary). When the ossuary was closed, the contents were transferred to theParis catacombs, which was also the resting place of remains removed from theErrancis Cemetery.
Those killed in theSeptember Massacres of 1792 are alleged to be buried here:
The decapitated corpses of theguillotine victims were thrown in specially dug trenches and covered inquicklime to speed up the decomposition process. There were no markers.
Among those reputed to have been buried here:[5]
It is unclear how many corpses were buried: the estimates vary from hundreds up to three thousand.
The cemetery was located on the intersection ofrue d’Anjou and theGrand Égout (nowBoulevard Haussmann) in Paris. It was part of the land on which theChapelle expiatoire, built in the memory of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, now stands.
48°52′25″N2°19′22″E / 48.87361°N 2.32278°E /48.87361; 2.32278
