Fountain of Innocents/Fontaine des Innocents - Paris, France - Literary Sites on Waymarking.com

"At first glance, Place Joachim-du-Bellay looks like any other public square within Paris. Its Old World charm and open, airy feel means it’s usually full of people milling about their business. But this lovely market square wasn’t always bustling with life. In fact, its soil was once bursting with the bones of the dead.

From the Middle Ages up until the late 18th century, the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery (Cimetière des Innocents) filled this plot of land. Records describing the old graveyard date back to the 12th century. A looming wall once encased the burial site, which was dotted with individual memorials when it first began.

But as the years wore on, the cemetery began to look more like a mass grave. It soon became the largest cemetery in Paris. People piled thousands of bones into its pockets of dug-out earth. The ground became so oversaturated with the decaying dead that even the smallest amount of rain would reveal the corpses lying just beneath the thin layers of soil. By the 1780s, the massive stench, vermin infestations, and possibilities of disease became so problematic the city decided to close the cemetery.

The bodies previously laid to rest within the Cimetière des Innocents were exhumed. Any lingering flesh was burned and removed, and the disturbed bones were relocated to the now world-famous Paris Catacombs. The catacombs contain sign marking bones that came from the dismantled graveyard. Bodies that were unable to fully decompose and instead turned into globs of fat were collected and transformed into candles and soap.

Today, the site of the gruesome burial ground is a hub of cafes, shops, and bistros. The 16th-century Fountain of Innocents, the oldest monumental fountain in Paris, stands as a memorial to the city’s lost cemetery. It was originally near the now-destroyed church that stood by the graveyard, but it was dismantled and re-erected in the center of the square after the cemetery was converted into a market." (from (visit link) )

"The Bones of Paris (2013)

Paris, France; September, 1929. For Harris Stuyvesant, the assignment is a private investigator’s dream—he’s getting paid to troll the cafés and bars of Montparnasse, looking for a pretty young woman. The American agent has a healthy appreciation for la vie Bohème, despite having worked for years at the U.S. Bureau of Investigation. The missing person in question is Philippa Crosby, a twenty-two year old from Boston who has been living in Paris, modeling and acting. Her family became alarmed when she stopped all communications, and Stuyvesant agreed to track her down. He wholly expects to find her in the arms of some up-and-coming artist, perhaps experimenting with the cocaine that is suddenly available on every rue and boulevard.

As Stuyvesant follows Philippa’s trail through the thriving, decadent expatriate community of artists and writers, he finds that she is known to many of its famous—and infamous—inhabitants, from Shakespeare & Co’s Sylvia Beach to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray. But when the evidence leads Stuyvesant to the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Montmartre, his investigation takes a sharp, disturbing turn. At the Grand-Guignol, murder, insanity, and sexual perversion are all staged to brutal effect in short, gut-churning acts. Depravity as art; savage human nature on stage. Soon, it becomes clear that one missing girl is a drop in the bucket. Here, amid the glittering lights of the cabarets, hides a monster whose artistic coup de grace is to be rendered in blood and gore. And Stuyvesant will have to descend into the darkest depths of perversion to find a killer . . . sifting through The Bones of Paris." (from (visit link) )

Short Description: "The Bone of Paris" deals with people's fascination of death, bones, cemeteries and the catacombs. Book Title: The Bones of Paris First Year Published: 2013 Author's Name: Laurie R. King Name of Waymarked Item: Fountain of the Innocents (former site of Cemetery of the Innocents) Location of Item: Square and structure More Information: Our 'hero' travels this are heavily duirng his investigation of missing persons in Paris in the late 1920s. Admission Price?: 0.00 (listed in local currency) Link to more information about the book or waymarked item.: [Web Link]

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