Sur les murs intérieurs du charnier apparaîtront en 1424 les célèbres fresques de la danse macabre parisienne dont l’éxécutant nous reste malheureusement inconnu. Accompagné d’un long poème (par Jean Gerson), chaque tableau met en scène des corps squelettiques, décharnés, personnalisant la mort, en conversation avec deux ou trois bons vivants sur le point de mourir, dignes représentants de l’ordre éclésiastique ou de la hiérarchie monarchique du Moyen-Âge. L’essentiel y est toujours semblable: nul n’échappe à la mort et elle chevauche constamment à nos cotés.

The plague is the evil in the fifteenth century and the cemetery of the Church of the Innocents in Paris overflows with corpses that had to be buried quickly. The earth of the grounds has acquired a solid reputation through the centuries: it decomposed bodies in only a few days (more likely it took five years). Alongside the common graves a long ossuary is set up, filled with human bones (more than seven hundred years of accumulation). The ossuary is above ground, ribbed vaults arched over the sidewalks and benches. Below, strollers, merchants, writers, prostitutes, everyone comes and goes, sitting, talking, walking beneath the ossuary, barely noticing the odors.

In 1424 on the interior walls of the gallery the famous frescos of the Parisian Danse macabre appears, the artist, unfortunately, unknown. Accompanied by a long poem by Jean Gerson, each tableau depicts emaciated skeletal bodies which personify death, in conversation with one or more living persons who are about to undertake the voyage of their demise. The human beings portrayed are representatives of the eclesiastic order and the monarchical hierarchy of the Middle-Ages. The message is always the same: no one, no matter how high their station in life, escapes death. Death accompanies us wherever we go.