Her final weeks
Marie-Antoinette at the Conciergerie
What's documented about her transfer, her two cells and the chapel built on the site — and what's since become legend.
Check tours and tickets on Viator ↗From the Temple to a guarded cell
Marie-Antoinette was moved from the Temple prison to the Conciergerie on the night of 1–2 August 1793, just over six months after Louis XVI's execution. She was first held in a ground-floor cell overlooking the women's courtyard, watched constantly by two gendarmes; after plots to free her were discovered she was moved to a second cell, where she spent her last 44 days. In all she was here for about eleven weeks.
A trial that lasted two days
The Revolutionary Tribunal, created in March 1793, brought her to trial on 14 October 1793 in the palace's former great hall. Early on 16 October she was found guilty, high treason among the charges, and she was executed that same day at the Place de la Révolution — the square now called the Place de la Concorde.
A chapel where the cell stood
After the Bourbon Restoration, Louis XVIII commissioned a memorial chapel on the site of her second cell. It holds a marble monument with the text known as the Queen's Testament and three paintings of her imprisonment; the cell itself does not survive.
Robespierre, briefly, in her former cell
Within the year her former cell had another occupant: after his arrest in July 1794, Robespierre was held there before the Tribunal condemned him, and he was executed on 28 July 1794.
Seeing it today
The memorial chapel comes later in the visit route, after the Salle des Gens d'Armes and the prison galleries. There's no separate entry for it — it's part of the single visit.