Basilica of St. Denis - Burials and Crypt

This is a walkthrough of the royal burial areas and crypt of the Basilica of St. Denis in Paris, highlighting the tombs of St. Louis, Clovis I, Louis XIV, Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette and Catherine de Medici.

The Basilica of St. Denis is one of the great, if less well known, churches of Paris.  Originally part of an abbey complex, the basilica was the burial site of St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris.  It later became the burial site of many French rulers.  The oldest monarch buried here is Clovis I, an early king of the Merovingian dynasty, and who is considered to have been the first true Catholic king in Europe.  Architecturally the basilica is noteworthy as being one of the earliest Gothic churches.  
Christianity arrived in Paris sometime around the early 3rd century.  Denis, the city’s first bishop, was martyred by beheading.  However, the city became much more open to Christianity following the arrival of the Franks in Gaul in the latter half of the 5th century.  Clovis, the leader of the Franks, embraced Christianity, or more specifically Catholicism, the first major monarch in Europe to do so.
The mutual recognition of Clovis’ dynasty in France and the religious authority of the Papacy established the Church as the arbiter of Europe’s monarchs for the next thousand years.  Clovis’ kingdom represented a return to normalcy in Western Europe for the first time in the better part of a century.  Clovis was arguably the most important Christian ruler in Western Europe between Constantine and Charlemagne.  After his death, he was buried in the Abbey of St. Genevieve in Paris.  During the 18th and 19th centuries, the abbey was massively renovated, and Clovis’ remains were relocated here.
There has been a church on the site of the basilica since the 7th century.  The current building largely dates from the early 12th century.  After its reconstruction, virtually every monarch was buried there, and many of the earlier kings were reinterred there.  During the French Revolution, all of the bodies were removed, dumped in a pit, and desecrated.  Later, those parts that survived were reinterred in a common ossuary.  Long neglected, the Basilica of St. Denis has been recently restored and is beginning to recapture the interest of pilgrims and tourists.

The Basilica of St. Denis was essentially completed in 1144.  Many students of architecture consider this cathedral as one of the prototype Gothic churches that would be constructed throughout Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.  Definitive exterior elements include the single bell tower on the right side of the façade and a massive, stained-glass rose windows over the transepts.  The basilica’s main draw is the impressive number of stunning tombs and reliquaries which are scattered around and beneath the building.  Although now mostly empty, these sepulchers once contained the bodies of nearly a hundred French monarchs and aristocrats.  A flattering but unlikely effigy lies upon the sarcophagus of Clovis I.  Among the other tombs here are those of Saints Denis and Louis IX; Louis XIV (the Sun King); Catherine de Medici and Marie Antoinette.

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