Picpus Cemetery

Picpus Cemetery is the only private cemetery in Paris, and its gates remain closed to everyone except the descendants of those executed here during the French Revolution. It sits on land that once belonged to a convent, but in the summer of seventeen ninety-four, it became a dumping ground for the victims of the guillotine. During the height of the Reign of Terror, carts arrived daily from the nearby Place de la Nation, carrying the bodies of nobles, nuns, and commoners who were unceremoniously dropped into two mass graves. Because the area was so close to the execution site, it provided the Revolutionary government with a quick and convenient solution for disposing of hundreds of bodies.