Lost for 450 years, famed poet’s grave found at Notre Dame, scientists say

For years, he did not have a name. When archaeologists excavated two lead sarcophagi from Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral in 2022, they identified one of the bodies from an epitaph on its coffin, but the second did not yield its identity so easily. That left researchers with a more-than-450-year-old mystery — which they now believe they’ve solved. The remains in the second sarcophagus are probably those of the French Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay, France’s National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research, or Inrap, said in a report published Tuesday. It’s...