Perhaps the most remarkable monument in Paris.

These are the words the writer Chateaubriand used to describe a Paris monument that you have most likely never heard of, the Chapel Expiatoire.

229 years ago, on Monday, January 21, 1793 at 10:22 a.m. Louis XVI, former King of France and Navarre was beheaded in Paris, at the Place de la Révolution (formerly Place Louis XV, which in 1795 became Place de la Concorde). 

The corpse of Louis XVI was immediately placed in the executioner’s (Charles-Henri Sanson) cart and transported to the cemetery of the Madeleine. There are two sworn vicars, faithful to the Revolution, who officiate a short funeral service. The vicar Damoureau later wrote: “Arrived at the cemetery, I had the greatest silence. A detachment of gendarmes showed us the body. He was dressed in a white waistcoat, gray silk breeches, the same stockings. We chanted vespers, prayers for the service of the dead. The body, uncovered in the coffin, was, according to the orders of the executive power, thrown into the bottom of the pit, on a bed of lime, then on a bed of earth, the whole thing heavily beaten several times. The head of Louis XVI was placed at his feet. The body is buried in a deeper pit than usual, to avoid desecration, and covered with quicklime”.

Wow, right? This is a major event of the French Revolution, and more generally of the history of France.

Louis XVI wasn’t the only headless corpse buried in this cemetery; Marie-Antoinette joined him on October 16, 1793 as well as over 1,000 others.  There were the Suisse guards that were protecting the royal family at the Tuileries, there were other royalists, mistresses (Madame du Barry), feminists (Olympe de Gouges who is known as a pioneer of French feminism) and anyone else who stood in the way of the revolutionists.  

With the cemeteries of Picpus, Errancis and Sainte-Marguerite, the cemetery of the Madeline was one of four cemeteries in Paris during the Revolution that received bodies beheaded by the guillotine.

Years later in the location of the former cemetery of the Madeline, Louis XVIII (who was Louis XVI’s brother) had decided to erect a commemorative chapel and not an “expiatory” one, the qualifier was never officially used on the very place where the bodies of the king and queen were found. In case you are not familiar with the word expiate, which I wasn’t, it means to atone for; make amends or reparation for. 

The monument was built between 1815 and 1826 according to plans drawn up by the architect Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine.

In 1862 a public park, the Square Louis XVI, the only public building to be named after the monarch, was created around the architectural complex. From the outside, the building looks like a closed enclosure which, once crossed, gives access to a raised esplanade framed by two cloister galleries called campo santo.

The campo santo crossed, the building consists of an upper chapel and a lower part. The interior inspires majesty and spirituality and houses two white marble statues in the upper part: Louis XVI by François Joseph Bosio and Marie-Antoinette by Jean-Pierre Cortot, as well as a bas-relief by Antoine-François Gérard.

Natural lighting through the eye of the vaults gives the expiatory chapel a special atmosphere. Look at the beautiful shadows they create.

On either side of the chapel you go down a few stairs to experience the interplay of construction and levels which gives you the impression of entering a crypt which ends in front of the black and white marble altar. This marks the exact place of the burial of Louis XVI. The cold December morning I visited I was the only person in the chapel. The only other person was the guard in the next building. I have to say as I went down the stairs and turned and saw the alter, I had goosebumps.

The bodies of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were transfered to the basilica of Saint- Dennis on January 21, 1815 but this ground is still hallowed.  The courtyard houses the resting place of over a thousand souls.  

The hours of the Chapelle Expiatoire are limited.  I walked by the square dozens of times on the be there on a Tuesday or at lunch when it was closed.  If you can find time in your travel schedule to at least visit the square it’s really worth a pause.

http://www.chapelle-expiatoire-paris.fr/en/

October to March

Open from Wednesday to Saturday:
From 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.
From 13:30 p.m. to 17:00 p.m.

April to September

Open from Tuesday to Saturday
From 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.
From 13:30 p.m. to 18:30 p.m.

CHAPELLE EXPIATOIRE 
29, rue Pasquier
75008 Paris

MÉTRO

lines 3, 12 , 13 et 14 station Saint-Lazare, 

lines 3 et 13, station Saint-Augustin, 

lines 3 et 9, station Havre-Caumartin, 

lines 8, 12 et 14, station Madeleine

BUS

lines 32, 43,49, 84 et 94