Lanternes
des Morts,
translated from French, Lanterns
of the Dead, the city of Paris did not install street lanterns until the
1500s, but cemeteries across France had light hundreds of years earlier,
the people of the 12th century built stone towers with platforms on top, sheltered from the wind but with openings for the light to shine out, to illuminate graveyards, most were destroyed during the French Revolution, but around a hundred or so survive to this day, so why was a lantern in a cemetery deemed more important than lanterns in city streets?
a light to guide departed souls, to prevent grave robbing, to keep the souls of the departed in the graveyard perhaps? well for a fuller look in to Lanternes
des Morts, and see more pictures and theory's about them have a look here at Kuriositas.
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