Gibbet of Montfaucon

The Gibbet of Montfaucon was the main gallows and gibbet of the Kings of France until the time of Louis XIII. It was used to execute criminals, often traitors, by hanging and to display their dead bodies as a warning to the population. It was a large structure located at the top of a small hill near the modern Place du Colonel Fabien in Paris, though during the Middle Ages it was outside the city walls and the surrounding area was mostly not built up, being occupied by institutions like the Hôpital Saint-Louis from 1607, and earlier the Convent of the Filles-Dieu ("Daughters of God"), a home for 200 reformed prostitutes, and the leper colony of St Lazare. First built during the reign of King Louis IX as a sign of royal justice in the late 13th century, the gibbet was later institutionalised under King Charles IV where the wooden scaffold was converted into stone with sixteen columns at a height of 10 meters. It was used until 1627 and then dismantled in 1760. A smaller gibbet was erected nearby for ceremonial purposes rather than for execution. As reconstructed in images by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc it had three sides, and 45 compartments in which people could be both hanged and hung after execution elsewhere. A miniature of about 1460 from the Grandes Chroniques de France by Jean Fouquet, and also a print of 1609, show a somewhat less substantial structure than that in the reconst