Workers in Lyon Find Gruesome Relics of French Revolution

Three decapitated skeletons, presumed to be the remains of royalists guillotined during the French Revolution, were discovered by construction workers, authorities said Sunday.

The bones were unearthed during work to build an underground parking lot in front of Lyon City Hall. For some months during the 1789 revolution, a guillotine remained permanently in operation right in front of the building, local historians said.

Justice was dispensed from the basement of the present City Hall.

The guillotine was apparently used only for dispatching those counterrevolutionaries deemed evil and important enough to merit an individual execution. A few hundred yards away a huge cannon was used for collective executions.