Holy Innocents' Cemetery
The Holy Innocents' Cemetery, c.1550. The Church of the Holy Innocents, bordering the Rue Saint-Denis, is in the background.
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| Details | |
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| Established |
12th century |
| Location | Paris |
| Country | France |
| Coordinates | 48°51′36″N 2°20′56″E / 48.860°N 2.349°E |
| Type | Public (not extant) |
| Style | churchyard |
| Find a Grave | Holy Innocents' Cemetery |
12th century
Closed: 1780
The Holy Innocents' Cemetery (French: Cimetière des Saints-Innocents or Cimetière des Innocents) is a defunct cemetery in Paris that was used from the Middle Ages until the late 18th century. It was the oldest and largest cemetery in Paris and had often been used for mass graves. It was closed because of overuse in 1780, and in 1786 the remaining corpses were exhumed and transported to the unused subterranean quarries near Montparnasse known as the Catacombs. The place Joachim-du-Bellay in the Les Halles district now covers the site of the cemetery.
The cemetery took its name (referring to the Biblical Massacre of the Innocents) from the attached church of the Holy Innocents that has now also disappeared.
Sources describe the burial ground, then called Champeaux, and the associated church in the 12th century. It was located next to the central market (the original location of Les Halles).
Under the reign of Philip II (1180-1223) the cemetery was enlarged and surrounded by a three-meter-high wall. Les Innocents had begun as a cemetery with individual sepulchres, but by then had become a site for mass graves. People were buried together in the same pit (a pit could hold about 1,500 dead at a time); only when it was full would another be opened.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, citizens constructed arched structures called or charnel houses along the cemetery walls to relieve the overcrowding of the mass graves; bones from the graves were excavated and then deposited here.
Between August 1424 and Lent 1425, during the Anglo-Burgundian alliance when John Duke of Bedford ruled Paris as Regent after the deaths of Henry V of England and Charles VI of France, a mural of the Danse Macabre was painted on the back wall of the arcade below the charnel house on the south side of the cemetery. It was one of the earliest and best-known depictions of this theme. It was destroyed in 1669 when this wall was demolished to allow the narrow road behind it to be widened.
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Wikipedia