Excavation exhumes hundreds of corpses from mass grave beneath upmarket Paris store
Shoppers unaware of mass grave under their feet and archaeologists are working against the clock to recover bodies from hospital cemetery
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 03 March, 2015, 11:28pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 03 March, 2015, 11:28pm
The Guardian in Paris
Archaeologists at work under the Paris store. Photo: SCMP Pictures
For Parisian shoppers browsing the racks of newly arrived lingerie on the ground floor of the Monoprix store on the busy Boulevard Sebastopol, there was little to suggest anything unusual.
As they queued for baguettes, croissants and loaves at the boulangerie counter - also on the ground floor - most were blissfully unaware that a few metres below them archaeologists were brushing away centuries of sand and dirt to reveal hundreds of skeletons in mass graves.
"It's rather a bizarre thought," said Pierre, a retired civil servant, as he clutched his bread stick on Monday. "Still, there's all sorts of odd things buried under Paris."
At the last count the remains of at least 200 people have been uncovered, and experts believe there may be more, victims of a sudden and devastating disease or catastrophe.
The discovery was made when the store applied to convert its cellar for extra storage space.
Knowing that the building sat on the site of a hospital dating back to the middle ages, managers called in archaeologists to check for human remains. Nobody expected them to find much; most of the bodies buried in the hospital grounds had been disinterred when the building was destroyed in the early 19th century.
But as the archaeological team dug a little deeper, they were astonished to find scores of skeletons in a mass grave.
"We had expected to find a few human remains as we knew it was a former hospital cemetery, but nothing like as many as we have found. We've come across hospital cemeteries before, notably in Marseilles and Troyes, but it's the first discovery of its kind in Paris," said Solène Bonleu of France's Institute of Preventative Archeological Research (INRAP).
Eight mass graves have been found so far, seven of them containing between five and 20 individual human remains buried up to five deep within a 100-square-metre area. The eighth grave contained, at the last count, the remains of 150 bodies.
Isabelle Abadie who is leading the dig said there was possibly another layer of bodies below those uncovered.
"What is astonishing is that the bodies were not thrown in, but put there with care and in an organised way. The individuals - men, women and children - were placed head-to-toe, no doubt to save space.
"It suggests there were a lot of sudden deaths, but we still have to find the cause of this sudden fatal event and whether it was an epidemic, fever, famine."
The archaeologists have two weeks to complete the dig and allow Monoprix to convert its cellars. Officials have said the authorities will have to find a site to rebury the remains after they have been examined.
"It's the state's responsibility. They will be treated with respect," Jean-Pascal Lanuit, head of cultural affairs in the region that covers Paris, said.
