The Catacombs

This weekend we visited the catacombs of Paris. There is a huge network of tunnels below Paris---deeper even than the Metro and the sewers---that was dug out over hundreds and hundreds of years as people quarried limestone, gypsum (for plaster) and clay (for mortar) from underneath the city. In all, there are almost two hundred miles of these tunnels. A section of this is open to the public. Apparently, there is a thriving underground pastime (sorry, I couldn't help it) devoted to exploring the "unauthorised" sections of the catacombs -- my google search on "Catacombs Paris" turned up about a dozen accounts of these kinds of expeditions. Aside from not getting lost or not falling into a flooded section of tunnel, you also have to avoid the cataflics ("cata-cops")-- the special police who patrol the catacombs. We opted for the authorized entrance, duly paid our 7 euros, and climbed way way way down a spiral staircase to walk through the tunnels.

It's really an incredible thing to be walking through the tunnels so far below the city. There are so many of them, and they were so inconsistently maintained, that after a while they caused a good number of cave-ins and other construction/structural problems. In the late 1700's, the city forbid any further quarrying and established the General Inspector of the Quarries, who oversaw the massive task of mapping, inspecting and reinforcing the tunnels. Each tunnel has a small engraved stone in the wall that records the year the tunnel was inspected, by whom, and in what order. So 75 G 1780 is the 75th tunnel inspected by engineer "G" in the year 1780. You can literally walk in the their footsteps...

But the thing that makes the Paris catacombs really famous is the "Ossuary," a section of the quarries set aside to hold the bones of more than 6 million dead Parisians spanning from the middle ages to the mid-1800's. The first bones were moved there in the 1780's, when the city closed the Saints Innocents cemetery (near Les Halles), the largest in Paris at the time, because of public health concerns. Bones from every cemetery then within the city limits (including a good number "uncovered" -- as the brochure calls it-- during Haussman's great redevelopment of the city) were transferred here through 1860. But not only were they transferred, there were... arranged, I suppose is the best word for it. They literally filled in a large quarry, building walls out of the bones, and you can walk through the tunnels formed by the walls. The entrance to the ossuary is marked with a carved stone marking that says, "Stop. This is the empire of the dead." If you can make it past that warning, it's not nearly as creepy as you'd expect, considering that, well, you're surrounded by bones. The ossuary has actually been consecrated and is respectful, with various monuments and quotes about life and death posted alongside the bones, as well as markers telling which cemetery the bones came from, and when. Even so, it's pretty macabre and gets to be a little much after the first couple "rooms." Calvin went the last part being carried with his head against Chris' shoulder, and Carter said after a while, "are we going to be done soon?" We talked about it a good amount before, during, and after our visit, and they don't seem to have any lasting angst... in fact, they recovered pretty much immediately, considering that they wanted to walk through the cemetery on the way back to the metro.

The other highlights of our weekend were having dinner out with friends (my first cassoulet, perfect winter food) and hanging out with Meredith and Kevin at our place Sunday having dinner and getting a chance to watch the Duke game. Our friend Kevin is heading back to the States later this week, and we don't know when he'll make it back to Paris, so this week will be devoted to celebrating with him before he goes.