Gay Paris

I missed my Gay Paris class on Wednesday because I wasn't feeling well. We had an "excursion," which means class was held in the city! Our task for the day was to find locations that were given to us by our professor. The locations were chosen from the book Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, which we're reading in class.

Since I missed class, I took my roommate Vicky with me out to try and find the places I was given. I took 35 photos, which is way too many to copy into the blog, but they're in a photo set on my Flickr with really brief descriptions of what each picture is. I also tried something new this time. I created a slideshow of the photo set, so that hopefully you can just click through the pictures right here in my blog. Unfortunately the slideshow doesn't have descriptions, and the images are smaller than the originals. So, if you're really interested in seeing the pictures, I definitely recommend going to my Flickr, but if you only have a few seconds definitely try to click through the slideshow.



I visited a couple churches, and some streets and adresses that are probably pretty inconsequential to anyone who isn't reading the book, but by far the coolest place I visited was Cimetière de Picpus (Picpus cemetery). Picpus is located in the 12th arrondissement, near Place Nation. Nation is where the guillotine was set up during the French revolution, and Picpus happens to be the burial ground of those executed during the summer of 1794. There were 1306 people executed by guillotine, including 16 Carmelite nuns, all of whom are buried in a mass grave at Picpus.

In the years following the Revolution, the land was purchased by a family whose members were executed and buried in the mass grave. According to the information I was given at the church, "they realized that all these unfortunate victims had been buried in haste, without any religious ceremony, and that nobody would ever come and pray at their graves. For that reason, they decided to create a sacred place for prayer and meditation, they bought the surrounding land and built a chapel. They requested the nuns of a neighboring community, the Sacred Hearts of Mary and Jesus, to set up a perpetual praying service for the souls of the victims."

There are a lot of cool cemeteries in Paris, and this one is one of the most interesting. It's not very well known, there were probably only 4 other people there while Vicky and I visited. There are two small portions of cemetery, the mass grave and a seperate area where family members of victims are buried. Most notable of these is probably the American General Lafayette. His wife's family members are buried in the mass grave, and so he and his wife are buried right next to it. His grave has an American flag on it, and is very well-kept by the Paris chapter of the Daughter's of the American Revolution. Who even knew that the DAR had a Paris chapter? Not that it's suprising...

Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend visiting Picpus cemetery and chapel. It's a 3€ entrance fee, but well worth it. You'll gain access to the chapel, and when you walk past the chapel you go through a big metal gate into a huge courtyard with a tree-lined walk to the cemetery. I think part of it's charm is that the grounds are incredibly beautiful, but not immaculately maintained. It's still in the care of the nuns, rather than being over-groomed. The focus is very much on the victims and the cemetery still. And the grounds are all in the middle of a city block. There's a very well-hidden entrance, and then you walk into the block and around all sides of the property there are schools and a hospital... only the door faces the street.

If you do go, I also recommend making sure that you look up good directions first, I almost missed it! The only sign is about the size of my palm, you can easily walk past. The website I linked to earlier gives pretty good directions, just know that you'll have to keep a look out to find it.