Aître Saint-Maclou
Tucked behind a half-timbered courtyard just two minutes from the cathedral, the Aître Saint-Maclou is one of the last surviving medieval charnel houses in Europe — its galleries are carved with skulls, crossbones and gravediggers' tools, yet the whole place has an almost peaceful, scholarly atmosphere.
What You Are Looking At
Built between 1526 and 1533 to cope with the mass burials of the Black Death, the courtyard's wooden galleries are covered in macabre bas-relief carvings of dance-of-death motifs — look closely at the beams and you will find femur bones, hourglasses and shovels worked into the decorative friezes with genuine artistry.
The bones of thousands of plague victims were once stacked in the upper galleries; today the courtyard houses the École des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, giving it a wonderfully surreal double life as an art school.
Photography and Visiting Practicalities
The courtyard is open to the public and free to enter — most tourists walk straight past the narrow entrance on Rue Martainville without realising it exists, which means you will often have this extraordinary space almost to yourself.
Morning light filters beautifully through the timber-framed galleries; the carved beams photograph best from the central courtyard looking up at an angle, with a wide-angle lens or phone in portrait mode.
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