Paris for the Holidays

Picpus Cemetery

Posted on November 22, 2019 Updated on December 20, 2020

Cimetière de Picpus
http://www.pariscemeteries.com/picpus-1
https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71410/Cimetiere-de-Picpus
https://www.google.com/#q=picpus+cemetery

Generally, Picpus is open Tuesday-Sunday,
From October to mid-April it is open 2-4
Closed Monday

Dedicated to the victims of the Terror (Reign of Terror 1793-1794)
Created from land seized from the convent of the Chanoinesses de St-Augustin, during the French Revolution

General Lafayette
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette
Honorary United States Citizen, Key Participant in the American Revolutionary War at George Washington’s Side
An U.S. Flag flies over his grave with contains soil taken from Bunker Hill
July 4, 1917 in Paris and the oath on the tomb of the Marquis de la Fayette
http://archives.ecpad.fr/le-4-juillet-1917-a-paris-et-le-serment-sur-la-tombe-du-marquis-de-la-fayette/

1794 Executions
Between June 14 and July 18, 1794, one thousand three hundred and six (1,306) men and women were guillotined at Place de la Nation (previously named Place du Trône, renamed then Place de Trône-Renversé)
as many as 55 a day

just a few short blocks away, What had been a local neighborhood garden soon became a series of mass graves for the decapitated bodies from the guillotine
The cemetery is reserved only to the family members of the victims

It is composed of an enclosure closed off from the public and an adjoining small cemetery, visible through the metal gate which separates it from the main cemetery.
The enclosure holds two mass graves