Madeleine cemetery

The Madeleine Cemetery is marked by its near-total disappearance beneath the bustling streets of the eighth arrondissement. During the French Revolution, this plot served as a mass grave for victims of the guillotine, including King Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. Their bodies were tossed into pits and covered with quicklime to hasten decomposition. After the Restoration, the Count of Artois ordered the remains exhumed, but the site was largely forgotten until construction workers rediscovered the old burial pits in the nineteenth century.