Cimetière des Saints-Innocents (fontaine des Innocents)

Paris (1er arrondissement)

In the heart of Les Halles, the place Joachim-du-Bellay occupies the site of the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents. For nearly ten centuries it received the dead of many Parisian parishes, of the Hôtel-Dieu and of epidemics. The poor were put in a common grave; their bones were then stacked in arcaded galleries, the charnel houses, built around the cemetery in the 14th and 15th centuries. On one of these charnel houses, along the rue de la Ferronnerie, a danse macabre was painted from August 1424 to Lent 1425, according to the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris. In 1429, the preacher brother Richard preached there ‘at the place of the Danse Macabre’. The engravings of Guyot Marchant, in the late 15th century, preserve its image. On 7 May 1780, the wall of a neighbouring cellar gave way under the weight of the bodies, and the cemetery closed in December. From 1785 to 1787, the bones were carried by night to the former quarries of the Tombe-Issoire, consecrated on 7 April 1786: these are the Catacombs. The church was razed, the cemetery became a market, then a square around the fontaine des Innocents.

Catacombes de Paris — Histoire du site ↗

Getting there: Place Joachim-du-Bellay, Les Halles quarter, metro Les Halles or Châtelet; public space freely accessible at all hours. Nothing of the cemetery survives above ground; the bones are in the Catacombs.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound