Have you taken a walk around the Place Denfert-Rochereau in the 14th arrondissement? Well let me take you on a little walk to show you exactly why you should spend a bit more time there.
Let’s start just behind the entrance to the Catacombs at the Square de l’Abbe-Migne. Created in 1880 it sits on the former Barrier d’Enfer, the Hell Gate of the Farmers general wall built in 1787. The square is named for Jacques-Paul Migne who was a Catholic priest and journalist who also published Catholic writings. Inside the square is a monument dedicated to Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet who was a 19th century artist and engraver who studied under Antoine-Jean Gros and was close friends with Théodore Géricault. The two traveled to England when the Raft of the Medusa was put on display after the Salon of Paris. You can find his painting of Napoleon at Waterloo in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs and The Conventional Merlin de Thionville in the Sully wing room 950 of the Musée du Louvre. The brass medallion on the monument was created by Charpentier in 1896.
The Berrier d’Enfer of the 1787 wall was used to collect taxes as goods came into Paris. It got its name from the former Boulevard d’Enfer which was part of what is the Boulevard Raspail today. Enfer or hell may come from the fact that it was once a site of debauchery. On either side of the Avenue du Général Leclerc Neo-Classical buildings by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux were built in 1787. Jean-Guillaume Moitte created the bas-reliefs on the facade. He had studied under Pigalle and also created sculptures for the Cour Carrée of the Louvre. Carnavalet, Pantheon, Fontainebleau and Versailles.
The buildings now hold two of the museums of the City of Paris. The Catacombs and the Musée de la Liberation.
The Catacombs, the final resting place of millions of former Parisians are one of the most popular stops on the list of many tourists. The Saint Innocents cemetery on the right bank dates back to the 6th century and in the 11th the Église Sainte Opportune was built on the same spot. All of the local parishes of Paris used the cemetery and became even more popular when the nearby Les Halles was installed. Much of it was used as a mass grave and as the 100,000 bodies arrived and decomposed it seeped into the water and ground causing caves to collapse and the residents in the area to get very sick.
In 1780 it was so bad that the wall of a home caved in and bodies rolled into the basement. The cemetery was closed and on November 9, 1785 the Conseil d’Etat voted to have it emptied. Where to put the 2 million permanent residents? The former quarries used to build Paris were used in the Montsouris area that we are at today. The same year they began the work of removing the skeletons, cleaning and then transporting them in a funeral cortege and then dumped into a hole where men waited to stack them.
Other cemeteries followed, seventeen in total, 145 monasteries, convents and 166 churches and chapels. Under Houssmann in the mid 19th century more bones were discovered and added. In total today there are more than 6 million people stacked up down there. It was never meant to serve as a tourist attraction, and is pretty morbid to even think about. In 1810 it was open to the public only a few days a year. Today it is a daily sold out excursion. The last bodies were added in 1933 to the 2 kilometer in length underground tunnel. Open Tuesday - Sunday 10am to 5pm and advance tickets are highly recommended.
Across the street is the wonderfully done Musée de la Liberation de Paris, Musée du Général Leclerc, Musée Jean-Moulin. It was opened on the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Paris on August 25, 2019. The museum itself is much older and was once located near the Gare Montparnasse where it was mostly hidden and void of many visitors. The location also served as the headquarters of Colonel Rol-Tangy where orders during the Liberation were given and where his wife Cécile also assisted. She was an amazing woman and one of the ladies we covered in a pass Paris History Avec a Hemingway episode of the Women of the Resistance. Give it a listen here. The museum is open Tuesday - Sunday 10am-6pm and is free.
The Place Denfert-Rochereau is named for Aristide Denfert-Rochereau who lived from 1823-1878. He was an engineer that went on the be a colonel and also politician. In October of 1870 he was named the Lieutenant-Colonel where he fought to defend the city of Belfort against the Prussians. In the city of Belfort today there is a large carved lion that pays tribute to him and the many that fought to defend the city.
The same lion is seen in the center of the place today. Auguste Bartholdi, who you know from the Statue of Liberty fame was commissioned in 1875 to create a monument to these brave fighters. He spent endless hours in the Jardin des Plantes studying the movements of the lions, much like Delacroix and Barye. Inspired by Bertel Thorraldse’s 1819 Lion of Lucerne in Switzerland which my grandparents once visited. It took 5 years to created the largest stone statue in all of France and was finally completed in August of 1880. The lion is proudly lying down but raising his front legs. His right foot steps on an arrow that is pierced between his toes. The same year it was completed the city of Paris commissioned a bronze copy, a third of the size, for the center of the place named for its godfather of sorts, Denfert-Rochereau.
The Boulevard Arago is just one of the eight streets that feeds into the place. It is named after François Arago who was born on February 26, 1786 in Roussillon. In 1805 he joined the Paris Observatory and at just 23 he was elected into the Academy of Science and became a professor. He would also become the Minister of War and the Head of State, or the Prime Minister as it is known today. However his name may sound more familiar from the brass markers that run through the city or the Da Vinci Code. More on that in a minute.
In 1634 Cardinal Richeleieu and Louis XIII ordered the main meridian through Europe created to be used for maps. Under Arago in the early 19th century he recalculated the location running from the Shetland islands to the Balearic islands. In 1884 the United States spearheaded adopting the current Greenwich Meridian which is 17 degrees from the original Ferro meridian adjusted by Arago. The Ferro once ran through Paris and is still marked today, but the Greenwich runs farther out, crossing through Le Havre and Bordeaux.
IN 1994, Dutch artist Jan Dibbets decided there needed to be a memorial dedicated to Arago and with the Arago society a monument that would run almost 6 miles was created. The 135 brass medallions inscribed with Arago and a N and S for Nord et Sud, North and South were added to the streets, gardens and inside my favorite building in Paris. They start at the Cité Universite in the 14th, not far from here and run through the city to the avenue de la Porte de Montmartre in the 18th. Today there are around 121 left as some have been removed or stolen but always fun to find.
Follow each and every one of the medallions from this great website.
You can find five of them in the small Place de l’ile de Sein where there is also a pedestal that once held a bronze statue of Arago himself. Alexandre Oliva created the statue in 1893 but it was melted down by the Germans in WWII. The place is dedicated to every one of the 133 men that lived on the small Brittany island that stood up with Charles de Gaulle to fight for France.
The street that runs next to it, the small Allee Nina Simone was dedicated in 2013 to the American singer that made France her home and where she died in 2003.
Just a block away is the Santé prison that was built in 1861 on the ground that was once the Sainte Anne Hospital built by Anne d’Autriche in 1651. The 1,000 cell prison is used as a transfer location and has housed everyone from Guillaume Apollinare to Manuel Noriega.
The one thing that towers over the area is the Paris Observatory that dates back to 1667. The year before Louis XIV and Colbert created the Academy of Science. Claude Perrault was tapped to create a building that would be built on the meridian line. Perrault is also known for the lovely Perrault Colonnade of the Palais du Louvre and his brother Charles wrote Cinderella. Pretty cool family.
The Cassini family, starting with Giovanni Domenico Cassini, served as the directors of the Observatory for 125 years. The family also lived here all the way down to his great grandson Jean Dominique Cassini. Inside you can still follow the meridian line as well as find the dome and telescope dedicated to Arago. In the small Jardin de l’Observatoire we can find a statue of Arago that was added in 2017 and created by Wilm Delroye.
On the Rue Cassini, clearly named for the family that runs on the front northern side of the Observatory you can find a few stunning examples of later French architecture. On the corner of Rue de Faubourg Saint Jacques and Rue Cassini is the Hotel de Massa that once stood on the Champs Elysees. In 1927, Theophile Bader, president of the Galerie Lafayette wanted to purchase a property to build a store on the famed avenue. He didn’t want the building that was there and offered it back to the French State who sold it to the Société des Gens de Lettres for 1 franc and gave them a spot of land in the 14th. In 1929, it was taken apart, stone by stone and board by board and moved to this spot. As for the Galerie Lafayette, it finally opened on the Champs Elysees in 2019. 90 years later.
On the Rue Cassini, Balzac lived for 9 years. Artist Jean Paul Laurenns who created the amazing frescos dedicated to the life of Sainte Genevieve in the Pantheon and Jean Moulin the resistance leader lived his last few years.
On the north entrance of the Observatory is a statue of Urbain Le Verrier. Verrier lived from 1811-1877 and was an astronomer and also discovered Neptune in 1846.