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The Catacombs Of ParisA Place Of Darkness In The City Of LightBy Susan NortonCatacombs Of Paris
The Catacombs began under Roman occupation in 60 B.C. as limestone quarries to build the city. In the 1100’s, King Phillippe-Auguste ordered tunneling and mining to further increase the ramparts around Paris for protection. That began centuries of reckless tunneling.
In one chamber rested a concrete sarcophagus with an alter
with these translated words: “Man, like a flower of the field flourishes while
the breath is in him, and does not remain nor know longer his own place. In
peaceful sleep, rest great
At the end of my one mile journey, coming up into the warm light of a quaint Parisian street, I realized that I was grateful to have gone in and grateful to have come out. Somehow, my visit to the underground had jump-started my senses. The sky seemed brighter, the people nicer, and I was consumed with a desire for a glass of French wine and an apple tart. The Catacombs Of Paris www.quovadimus.org/paris/cat 1, place Denfert-Rochereau Phone: 33-01-43-22-47-63 Cost - 5 euros |
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Some
come to Paris for the The Louvre, The Eiffel Tower, some for the food and wine,
but this time I came, strictly for the BONES, those belonging to the more than 6
million French men and woman who were deposited in the caves and tunnels of the
Catacombs, twisting some 300 kilometers or 40% under the streets of Paris.
By
1786, Paris had a desperate problem with their dead. The cemeteries were
overloaded and smelling. The ground was bulging up 10 to 20 ft. with dead
bodies, sometimes, breaking out and rolling down the streets, causing horrendous
disease and mayhem. It was decided to move the bodies into the Catacombs.
Priests rolled wooden carts filled with the dead in the middle of the night,
offering prayers as they progressed to secret openings in the ground. It took 15
months to complete the process. It is believed that the bones of Robespierre,
Rabelais, Pascal and Madame de Pompadour along with many of the French elite are
in those Catacombs. As the years went by, more cemeteries joined in the bone
removal. Later, King Charles X even threw grand parties in some of the large
subterranean galleries.
Over
the years, the Catacombs have been commissioned as hideouts for the religious,
the criminal, Hitler’s soldiers and France’s Resistance Fighters. In more recent
years, it has been used for illegally growing mushrooms and storing potatoes and
beer.
I
arrived on a cold morning this spring, armed with a warm coat and a flashlight,
excited to begin my 1.7 kilometer excursion into the underground. I counted each
one of the 130 steps of the stone spiral staircase as I descended 20 meters
down, deeper than the Metro. Then I began walking along a tunnel, the floor
covered in wet gravel. The sounds of my steps soon became like fingers on a
chalkboard, and after what seemed like a long while, I began to wish that I had
brought a croissant to drop crumbs from in order to find my way back.
Finally,
I came to a chamber with a sign above it that translated to say, “This is the
Empire of the Dead. Stop.” I inched my way into a cavity that was lit by yellow
spotlights. There were piles of bones: tibiae, fibulae, skulls with sad empty
eye sockets.
As
I walked on, I was interested that sometimes the stacking of the bones was done
very symmetrically, almost artistically, with femurs placed to give the feeling
of wheel spokes, accented by the occasional skull. At other times, they were
just heaped in disorganized piles. But, all of them were within reach, no
guardrails or Plexiglas barriers. I was temped to touch but remembered the sign,
warning all not to. No need to worry about anyone stealing anything.
The
perceived moral punishment would be too great, and the air itself was permeated
with a respectful silence, only disturbed by the occasional drip from the
ceiling, as if someone above was crying. 
people.”