Is Marie-Antoinette buried here?

What you actually see

People climb the steps looking for "the tomb of Marie-Antoinette", and they walk past without recognising it, because they were expecting a tomb. There are two kneeling statues, her and Louis XVI, hands joined, in court dress. These are commemorative monuments, sculpted by Edme Gaulle and Pierre Petitot at the request of Louis XVIII after 1815. Beneath these statues, there is none of what the word "tomb" promises. The rest of the story is told on the page about the two remains.

Why there is no intact burial

In 1793, the Convention ordered the royal tombs to be opened; the official reason was to recover the lead from the coffins for the war. The remains were thrown into two mass graves north of the church, with lime. In 1817, Louis XVIII had these bones recovered: it was impossible to reassign them one by one. They were placed, mixed together, in an ossuary in the crypt, behind a plaque listing the sovereigns. The details are on the desecration of 1793 and on the crypt.

The question of the head

This is the most frequent search, and the answer is simple: there is no lost head. After the execution, the head was buried with the body at the cimetière de la Madeleine, and it was transferred with him to Saint-Denis in January 1815. Stories of a misplaced, sold or preserved head elsewhere are baseless. I often tell visitors who arrive with this question; they are disappointed for a second, then relieved.

Where to look, specifically

Praying statues are in the paid section, that of the choir and the transept. From the nave, which is free to access, they cannot be seen. This is where many visits go wrong: you enter, look at the nave, and leave. Take the time to walk around the ambulatory and go down to the crypt, where the ossuary is located. The route in order is described on what to see in the basilica, and the other tombs on the page of the gisants.

Frequently asked questions