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10 stops · about 2.4 km on foot · Paris, France

Dark history around Paris (part 1)

Follow the stops in order. Each is a documented story set at or near this spot.

Open the walking route in Maps See it on the Dark Atlas

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  1. Start · Paris · 1793

    The Woman Who Killed Marat in His Bath

    Charlotte Corday walked into Jean-Paul Marat's home with a kitchen knife and left four days later for the guillotine. A man slapped her severed head; legend says it blushed.

  2. 587 m on · Place Maubert, Paris · 1546

    Burned for Mistranslating a Single Line

    Two added words in a translation of Plato were enough to have him strangled and burned alongside his own books.

  3. 483 m on · Paris · 1778

    Voltaire's Final Battle With The Church

    The Church tried to deny him a grave, but revolutionaries would carry his body to a hero's tomb thirteen years later.

  4. 1.2 km on · Place de Grève, Paris · 1680

    The Poisoner Of The Sun King's Court

    Behind Versailles' glittering court, a fortune-teller ran a thriving trade selling poison to desperate noblewomen.

  5. same spot · Place de Grève, Paris · 1757

    The Last Man Drawn And Quartered In France

    A failed attempt to stab the king ended in an execution so grotesque it helped turn Europe against public torture.

  6. 55 m on · Place de Grève, Paris · 1766

    The General Gagged Before He Was Beheaded

    After losing Pondicherry, Thomas Arthur, comte de Lally, came home to clear his name. Paris gagged him, took him to the Place de Grève on a cart, and beheaded him. Voltaire spent years undoing it.

  7. 60 m on · Paris · 1594

    The Assassin Torn Apart With Molten Lead

    A student's failed attempt on the King's life ended with his hand burned in molten sulphur and lead, and his body dismembered in public.

  8. same spot · Paris · 1793

    The Assassin Whose Severed Head Blushed

    She murdered a revolutionary leader in his bath to save France, and witnesses swore her severed head reddened afterward.

  9. same spot · Paris · 1310

    The Book That Outlived Its Author's Pyre

    A woman was burned for writing that the soul could reach God without the Church, but her banned book kept circulating in secret for centuries.

  10. same spot · Paris · 1943

    The Designer Who Spied For The Nazis

    While Paris starved under occupation, the fashion icon lived at the Ritz, and declassified French files list her as a Nazi intelligence agent.

Coordinates mark the place of each story, and some are approximate. Check opening times and access before you go.