Haunted in Paris Part Deux: Paris' Ghosts

French history -- as a general rule -- is pretty macabre: in the 5th century, Visigoth king Thorismund was murdered by his younger brother Theodric II because the latter wanted the former's throne. In the 13th century, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade on a religious group (the Cathars) in the south of France, and the French crown set about wiping out the sect (and securing the Spanish-held Toulouse region). The 14th and 15th centuries saw the 100 Years War; the 16th saw the massacres of the Huguenots; the 18th saw the French Revolution, with its more than 40,000 victims. The 19th featured the Napeolonic Wars and the 20th boasted 2 World Wars and the Nazi occupation. 

To say, then, that Paris is haunted is a fairly easy intuitive leap. The ancient streets and buildings are literally stained with the blood of French men and women who found themselves on the wrong side of any one of the conflicts that have taken place inside the city.

As I wandered the city, though, the ghost I felt most strongly was that of Marie Antionette. On our second to last day in Paris, Kristen Gay and I decided to visit the Palais de Justice, which is made up of three major attractions: Sainte Chapelle, with its famous Rose Window, the Palais plaza and government buildings, which still house official operations,  and the Conciergerie, the prison where Marie Antionette was held just before her execution.

And it was her ghost that haunted me most strongly in this place. In part, that's by design. The entire tour of the Concergerie is designed to build up to Marie Antionette's story. Her name appears more than any other's, even though thousands spent their final hours on earth within those walls, including Robespierre.

Even more than her ubiquity, though, what struck me was how she is constructed in the space. While other notable prisoners, Robespierre in particular, are memorialized through artifacts like letters, paintings, and busts, Marie Antionette is treated very differently:

In the center of a reconstructed cell, a black-clad figure sits, face downcast, ostensibly reading her Bible. Just behind her chair, 2 French soldiers lurk. One of these peers over a privacy screen at the black-clad pious figure of the condemned queen.

The whole of the Concergerie is haunting: the shadows cast by the grand pillars and reconstructed cells force visitors to recall the excruciating last days of thousands of condemned French men and women. But Marie Anoinette's cell is the most disconcerting, in part because the campy set up feels entirely discordant with the somber tone of the rest of the space. And though the placards around the space trumpet Antionette's dignity, the space speaks not of dignity but of spectacle. 

The rhetoric of the space clashes with the official rhetoric of the memorial.