Abadie to know for sure when or how the bodies came to be buried where they were. “Most of the time, you only stumble upon buildings.”ĭNA testing and carbon dating could take months, so it is too early for Ms. “Each dig is an event, but a cemetery is even better, because you have a real population at hand,” said Boris Bove, a historian and professor at the Université Paris 8 who recently co-wrote a book on the French capital in the Middle Ages. The long-buried mass grave is a reminder that Paris, for all its surface grandeur, is still replete with undiscovered archaeological treasures, some grand, others much more grisly.įor archaeologists, though, grisly can be good. Past pallets of juice and soda bottles, down another flight of stairs, you will find a grim reminder of Paris’s history: a mass grave, with row upon row of medieval skeletons, 316 in total.Īrchaeologists believe the discovery, unearthed in January, is part of the cemetery of a medieval hospital called the Hôpital de la Trinité that used to stand nearby. Slip through that passageway and turn left down a spiraling metal staircase into the basement.
PARIS - Past the racks of hair accessories on the ground floor of the Monoprix supermarket on the corner of the Rue Réaumur and the Boulevard de Sébastopol in the Second Arrondissement, there is a door marked staff only.
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