The Catacombs of Paris: France's Subterranean Bone Collection

48°50'09.43"N 2°19'51.70"E

(from Wikimedia Commons)

   Paris is renowned worldwide as the "City of Love" with an estimated number of 9000 marriages registered every year. Some reasons for it are the charming boulevards, the expressive mimes and the imposing Gothic architecture. But beneath the surface, the Parisian atmosphere disappears completely: instead of love pairs and mimes, a shocking amount of millions of lost souls lays there. Welcome to the Catacombs of Paris, the hidden side of the French capital.

 

    The Catacombs are basically a big labyrinth packed full of human bones. I know this sounds a bit revolting but it shouldn't be as bad as it sounds as there are guided tours through them. You just have to get to a square in the 14th Arrondissement in Central Paris, buy the entry ticket and access to the subterranean graveyard (Learn more about the tours). Although, why was this built in the first place?

   To understand that that, as in all the other posts on this blog, we have to look back at history. This time we travel to the Roman Age, when Paris was called Lutetia and had a population of 5000 people, the equivalent of a village in the present day, though it was an important town in the era. Lutetia was located on a rich limestone layer, a very resistant material that was very appreciated in that time. So when the locals noticed it, they made an open-air mine that eventually became underground as it was used for the construction of landmarks such as the city walls or the famous Louvre palace.

A pair of supportive columns that did support (from Wikimedia Commons)

   And of course it was a bad idea to dig under the city's foundation, because it could lead to a collapse.After a few those collapses, a genius had the idea of installing columns which still can be sighted today. But the builders of these columns weren't geniuses and they didn't help much, so the Authorities had to choose between stop quarrying and preserving the city, or continue digging and burying both the limestone and Paris. They preferred the first one. With that, the mines were forgotten; but ten years later they had to be re-opened because of a different cause.

  It was around 1787, so you can imagine that the situation in the country was bad, as some years later the unprivileged would launch the French Revolution. Conditions were that terrible, that they almost seemed ridiculous like the famous phrase of Marie Antoinette "If you don't have bread, eat cake". But I would bet that the sanitary situation was even more unbelievable as the cemeteries were so overcrowded, the bodies had to be removed and placed in the old limestone mines, which therefore were renamed to Catacombs.

Sign indicating that this bones come from the cemetery of Saint John (from Wikimedia Commons)

  In 1809, they were opened to the public and throughout the years were visited by important royal and political figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte. And if you think that was it, you're wrong. The Catacombs of Paris already served as a mine, as a warehouse for dead bodies, and they would serve too as a shelter. It was the own citizens of Paris who firstly used them for this purpose, later the Nazis would adopt their strategy and lastly the Free French Forces would place there their Headquarters.

   In the 21st century, they are mainly touristic as I already said, but not all are open for visitors due to safety risks.  Taking advantage of this, a group of unknown once made an illegal private club out of one of the tunnels and it worked until the police discovered it. There are also some catacomb freaks (didn't know such a thing existed) who illegally access these caves just to explore them. This type of people have the very original designation of "Cataphiles".

A row of spooky skulls (from Wikimedia Commons)

Sources and Picture Credits:

Sources: Les Catacombes de Paris, Atlas Obscura, Brilliant Maps

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (Learn more)

Picture 1 and 2 https://www.flickr.com/people/79586279@N00 (Shadowgate)

Picture 3 https://www.flickr.com/people/91873384@N04 (Dale Cruse)

Picture 4 https://www.flickr.com/people/55125784@N04 (Cesar I. Martins)