7 September 2015 / leggypeggy

Paris—starting in the dark underside

art, artworks, bones, catacombs, French Revolution, Paris, skeletons, skulls, tunnels

Bones and skulls artistically arranged

If you follow this blog, you’ll know that we usually travel to far-flung places. But for this couple of months we’ve made an exception—we’re visiting Libby and Daniel, the daughter and son-in-law who got married in February and moved to France in March, while we were in India. You can read about that here.

We arrived in Paris four days before Libby and Daniel returned from a two-week hiking holiday in the Alps, but we weren’t concerned. We know how to keep ourselves busy, plus we chose to arrive early on purpose so we could recover from jetlag before joining a bike–barge tour in the Loire Valley (more about that soon).

So after we collected keys to their flat, washed off the grime from two long flights and changed into fresh clothes, we headed out to explore some of the places Libby recommended on the lists and maps left for us on her kitchen table.

Entering the ossuary in the Paris catacombs

While Paris is often referred to as the City of Light, we decided to start with its alter-ego—its dark underside—the catacombs.

It was a convenient choice and a place that Poor John and I had never before visited. Lib’s note said the entrance was a short walk from their place and that the tour would take about three hours, including queuing (standing in line).

We figured that our arrival in the queue at 1:30pm was just about perfect. Little did we know that the catacombs close for a couple of hours at lunchtime, so we were standing in a queue that wasn’t going to move for at least 30 minutes.

Luckily it was sunny and warm—a nice change from the wintry days we’d left behind in Australia. There was plenty of people-watching, and it gave us of time to study the guidebook we’d brought.

In to the catacombs

So what about the catacombs?

Let’s start with the miles and miles of tunnels that snake beneath the streets of Paris. Much of the city is built from limestone and, starting in the 13th century, much of that rock was quarried in Paris itself, leaving a vast network of empty tunnels.

These tunnels were forgotten about until the mid-18th century, when some of them caved-in causing widespread panic among the people of Paris.

This mayhem was further aggravated by the fact that construction and collapsing continued throughout the city, often disturbing the graves of those ‘resting in peace’ in the many cemeteries scattered across the city. The residents of The Halles neighbourhood were the first to complain about the smell of rotting flesh. Even the perfume stores said they couldn’t compete with the stench.

A record of where the bones and skulls came from

In 1763, Louis XV banned burials in the city, but the churches took no notice and the problem festered, literally. Fourteen years later, King Louis XVI created a government department tasked with preventing underground risks and monitoring and shoring up the tunnels to ensure the safety of property and people. Exploratory tunnels were dug under the streets. Some parts were filled in and other were reinforced with thick support walls and pillars.

Finally in 1786 they began to shift skeletons from cemeteries to the vacant and reinforced tunnels. It took 12 years to move all the bones from 150 monastery, church and convent graveyards. It is estimated that six to seven million skeleton parts now lie in the catacombs.

During the French Revolution and until 1859, the dead were often buried directly into the catacombs ossuaries. Two of the famous/infamous characters from history who call the catacombs their final resting place are Jean-Paul Marat, one of the Revolution’s most radical voices, and Maximilien de Robespierre, an influential figure during the Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror.

While we didn’t see the resting place for either of these historical figures, we saw thousands of others. Bones are grouped by the cemetery they came from and the date they were moved.

About a mile’s worth of bones are currently open to the public. These are neatly, and often artistically, arranged with skulls and leg and arm bones being used to create walls behind which, we assumed, are the remaining smaller bones.

A sculpture in the Paris catacombs

More sculpture in the Paris catacombs

We also saw the handiwork of Décure, an ancient quarry inspector. HIs subterranean sculptures were made long before the tunnels became a gigantic graveyard. They depict the Port-Mahon fortress in the main city of Minorca in the Balearic Islands. Décure sculpted the models from memory after being held prisoner there by the English during the Seven Years War. Décure was later killed by a cave-in while he was trying to dig an access stairway way to the tunnels.

It took us about 45 minutes to wander through the catacombs, so with the two hours we stood in the queue, the prediction of needing three hours was just about right. That said, we noticed the queue was quite short about 2:30pm—at least half the length from when we joined an hour earlier.

Oh, and Libby and Daniel are pretty sure some of the catacombs run under their flat. Here’s hoping they don’t fall through.

And if you need a refreshing drink after this subterranean visit, try the limoncello cocktail that Libby and Daniel made for my cooking blog.