Paris Day 9: The Paris Cemetery and Catacombs

We took another memorable walk through the streets of Paris. After leaving the Luxembourg gardens, we found the walk to the catacombs fascinating and full of unexpected finds, like this red rock castle. Purpose unknown.

We then ran into the Fontaine de l’Obersvatoire.

Then we found our way through some of Paris’s cemetery.

We made across the street from our desitantion, and decided to stop for lunch and try some ‘Tacos”

I got a curry taco. It was actually really amazing. I dream about it sometimes. Karl got a burrito.

It was basically a Gyro, inside or a thin grilled pita bread. YUM.

We crossed the street and we were these, The Paris Catacombs.

Yeah!

We got through security, and waited to descend into the deep.

Our turn came, and as we went down 3 stories. On the wall down there…

Who is this Jazzy?????

Down down down…

We entered the tunnels. And they were long. We walked for nearly 10 minutes down empty tunnels, and it seemed like nothing was there. As we went we listened to the audio guides that told us about the history of these tunnels. During the reign of Louis the 15th, while they were building the Pantheon, and Versailles, and all of the other HUGE granite buildings in Paris. Well, it turned out that they over excavated, and they have to do subterranean infrastructure to make sure that the city didn’t totally collapse on it’s self.

Some of the walls, labeled with where they were. Marked also about when they were made.

It cost them SO much money to make these structures, but Paris was literally sinking into the ground.

Around this same time, Paris’s cemeteries began to be overly full. These were not the days of a single head stone and a nice place to remember someone. NO it was open mass graves all over the place, and the city was getting smelly. It got so bad that food consumed a few blocks from these sights was deemed unsafe for human consumption. Illness and disease were everywhere, and the water as starting to become contaminated.

The problem was put to the city’s leaders and they were like…”Dude, I know where all these guys can get dumped! Three stories below the city where on one can smell them!” Or something like that. They moved all the bodies from the mass graves and threw them down down down. Then for 30 years they required bodies to be disposed of this way. Well years went by, and inspired by the Roman catacombs a young nobleman wanted to turn these deep bone pits into a museum. He “respectfully” and artistically stacked the bones for people to come and see.

We had been down there for nearly an hour, and hadn’t really seen bones yet.

And then the stacks began.

The excitement of the bones was beginning to wear off, and the realization that these were the bones of 3 million people and it was just a super bummer.