For the European Heritage Days, come and discover the temporary exhibition «Le seul homme de la famille. The Duchess and the Duke of Angoulême” and participate in the guided tours of the monument and the exhibition.
Thanks to exceptional loans from the Musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design de Bordeaux, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres and private collections, the exhibition makes it possible to rediscover and highlight for the first time this almost royal and yet unknown couple, formed by two characters with fates shaped by history.
The Expiatory Chapel, a memorial
The Expiatory Chapel stands on the site of the old Madeleine cemetery where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were buried during the Revolution, as well as the bodies of 500 condemned to the guillotine. During the Restoration, Louis XVIII had the remains of the sovereigns transferred to the royal necropolis of Saint-Denis. The work of the Expiatory Chapel is entrusted to the architect Pierre Fontaine. Completed in 1826, this memorial monument, recalls the sin that constitutes in the eyes of the royalists, the execution of King Louis XVI. Threatened with demolition on multiple occasions, the Expiatory Chapel is, according to Chateaubriand, «the most remarkable monument of Paris».