4/24/08
When you go to Paris, don’t miss the catacombs.
In the late 17th century Parisians discovered that the “Cemetery of the Innocents”, located next to the famed Les Hales market, was leading to the contamination of the local groundwater. The decision was made to move the entire effing graveyard outside the (then) city limits, so under cover of night, they began dumping their millions of long-dead citizens into an old rock quarry.
The civil engineer who takes credit for the idea apparently noticed that huge piles of bones dumped in a hole is a less than dignified way to spend eternity, and encouraged the decorative arrangement of the former human beings.
The result is fascinating, strangely beautiful, and not nearly as creepy as you’d think it should be. The bone masons seem to have worked primarily with femurs and skulls, building retaining walls, which held back the remaining thousands of human bones. They decorated skulls into abstract geometric patterns, crosses, even a valentine. All of the bodies anonymous. Some of them famous before their demise.
I haven’t yet had time to satisfy my remaining curiosity about the catacombs: Who were the workers who constructed the designs? Was there a trial and error period as they found the best bones to work with? Did they strip the flesh off of the fresher corpses, or were those left to rot elsewhere?
Apparently non-tourist sections of the catacombs (they stretch for miles) attach to the city sewers, and there are corpse-spelunkers who (illegally) explore the vast network. I wonder if I can hook up with a group of them for my next Paris visit?
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