The chapel is within a courtyard which is surrounded by an enclosed cloister-like precinct, a peristyle. In the courtyard are cenotaphs to those who were known to be buried in this location.

A chapel dedicated to King Louis XVI and his Queen Marie Antoinette, although they are formally buried in the Basilica of St Denis. Fontaine's assistant Louis-Hippolyte Lebas oversaw the construction. The chapel was partly constructed on the grounds of the former Madeleine Cemetery where King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette had been buried after they had been guillotined. King Louis XVIII shared the 3 million livres expense of building the Chapelle expiatoire with the Duchess of Angoulême. Construction took ten years, and the chapel was inaugurated in 1826 in the presence of Charles X. White marble sculptures of the king and queen in ecstatic attitudes were made by François Joseph Bosio and Jean-Pierre Cortot.