Eglise Saint Severin, Paris

The church of Saint Séverin in Paris is in the 5th arrondissement, near the Seine. It has been the parish church for this part of Paris since the 9th century, and there has been a chapel on this site since the 6th century. After being razed by the Vikings in the 9th century, a new church was built in the 13th century, then added to in the 15th. The bell from this period is the oldest in Paris and the gargoyles are rather marvellous.

Its main claim to fame is that it is the last intact charnel house in Paris. The cemetery opened in 1250 and in 1430 was formed by galleries on three sides of the courtyard. Today the bones have been removed, and the galleries look like a cloister. The priests lived in rooms above the galleries. 

There were two ways you might be interred in the cemetery. If you were poor you would be tossed into a communal pit. If you were rich your body would be laid out to rot until there was nothing but a skeleton. Then your bones would be stacked up in one of the galleries.

But in 1674 the charnel houses were banned because of the collapse of parts of the Cimetiere des Innocents due to the weight of bodies, and the galleries did indeed become cloisters. The bones were removed to the Catacombs and by the 18th century the galleries were even closed in with glazing. In the 19th century the western galleries were demolished.