The Pseudo-Londoner: The Eighty-Fourth Day, Part 1: Le Catacombes de Paris

Friday, May 2, 2014:

Guys. The Catacombes de Paris is, without a doubt, my favourite thing Paris has to offer. Simultaneously eerie and peaceful, terrifying and beautiful. I felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie.

For those of you who don't know about them, the Catacombes (officially named the l’Ossuaire Municipal) is a massive underground ossuary beneath the streets of Paris.

During the 18th century, the mass graves and cemeteries within the city's limits were a serious concern for the Parisian people, mainly because the hurried (and often improper) burial procedures were a huge cause of disease among the people.

The idea to resolve this issue was to close the existing cemeteries inside the city, and then re-locate their corpse-residents to the huge network of abandoned Lutetian limestone quarries under the city. (The Notre Dame Cathedral was built out of this limestone.)

The result is a haunting maze several stories below Paris, where the bones of around six-million people now rest, neatly stacked in decorative patterns, and reverently preserved. And open for exploration by those brave enough.

We entered the Catacombes through a narrow tunnel, and after descending down a spiral stone staircase just over 62 feet down into the darkness and silence, we came upon this:

As a tribute to some fallen limestone miners, the survivors carved a replica of their home district,
the Quartier de Cazerne.

Basically this says something along the lines of, "This work was started in 1777 by Decure dit Bausejour, a soldier of His Majesty, and was finished 1782." He was the guy who headed the carving of Le Quartier de Cazerne.

After the Quartier de Cazerne carving, we came upon the "Bain de Pieds des Carriers." The Quarryman's Footbath. It's said to be the site of the first geological drilling in Paris.

After leaving the footbath, we followed tunnels like this:

Until we came to this ominous sign:

"Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead"

Okay, if that's not the most terrifying warning message, I don't know what is. But we forged ahead.

(If you noticed in the above photo, on the ceiling is a thick black charcoal line. It's meant to show the way for visitors to the Catacombes, particularly before the invention of electricity, as now there are lamps to light the way. I couldn't help imagining a lone traveler, sometime in the past, holding an oil lantern above his head, struggling to keep his eyes on the line and avoid being lost forever in a literal tomb of death. Terrifying.)

Okay, let's be real for a minute: I knew what I was in for prior to going into the Catacombes. I knew I'd be seeing literal millions of human corpses. But it's one thing to read about a mass grave of 250-some-odd-years worth of Parisian citizens, and it's a completely different thing to actually SEE IT with your own eyes.

It's still difficult to put my feelings about this place into words. It's creepy. It's haunting. It's humbling. It's reverent. It's unsettling. It's beautiful.

I think the thing that has stayed with me longest is the acute realization of my own impending mortality. It's a very strange feeling. You know the feeling you get when you're in a cemetery? Where you realize you, too, will be sleeping in one one day? But it seems far away, sort of removed, so you push it to the back burner, right?

Now imagine standing in that same cemetery, but without trees, grass, earth, or caskets standing between you and those who lived and died before you.

It's immediate. It's in-your-face. And you have to deal with mortality head on, in that very moment. It's strange, to say the least.

The "Cimitiere des Innocents" (Cemetery of the Innocents)
was one of the cemeteries exhumed and relocated to the Catacombes.

Throughout the ossuary they've placed plaques, all in French of course, with various quotes about death and mortality. (Pardon the terrible google translations of French Poetry, btw.)

Où est-elle la mort? toujours future ou passée.
A peine est-elle présente que déjà elle n'est plus.

Where is death? Always future or past.
Hardly is she present than already gone.

Ainsi, tout passe sur la terre

Esprit, Beauté, Grâce, Talent

Telle est une fleur éphémère

Que renverse le moindre vent

Thus, everything passes on earth

Spirit, Beauty, Grace, Talent

Such is an ephemeral flower

That reverses the slightest wind

Tout nait, tout passe, tout arrive

Au terme ignoré de son sort

A l'océan l'onde plaintive

Aux vents la feuille fugitive

L'aurore au soir, l'homme a la mort

All are born, all pass, all arrive

To the end of their unknown fate

To the plaintive ocean wave

To the winds the fleeting leaves

Dawn 'til dusk, man has death

A la mort on laisse tout.

At death, we leave everything.

Croyez que chaque jour est pour vous le dernier.

Believe that each day is your last.

- Horace

They call this room the Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp. Creepy.

Insensé que vous êtes, pourquoi

vous promettez vous de vivre longtemps,

vous qui ne pouvez compter sur un seul jour.

Fool that you are, because

you promise to live forever,

when you cannot rely on a single day.

Quels enclos sont ouverts! quelles étroits places

Occupe entre ces murs l'a poussière des races!

C'est dans ces lieux d'oubli, c'est parmi ces tombeaux

Que le temps et la mort viennent croiser leurs faulx

Que de morts entasses et presser sous la terre!

Le nombre ici n'est rien la foule est solitaire.

What enclosures are open! What narrow places

Occupied between these walls, the dust of the races of men!

It is in these neglected places, it is among these tombs

That time and death come to cross their scythe

That of the dead, piled up and pressed under the earth.

The number here is nothing; the crowd is solitary.

Ils furent ce que nous sommes

Poussière, jouet du vent;

Fragiles comme des hommes.

Faible comme le néant!

They were who we are

Dust, playthings of the wind;

Fragile like men.

Weak as nothingness!

-Lamartine

Le trépas vient tout guérir

Mais ne bougeons d’om nous sommes

Plutôt souffrir que mourir

C’est la devise des hommes.

Death comes to heal all

But we press on

Rather to suffer than to die

That is the motto of men.

-Lafontaine

Disposes de tes biens parce que tu mourras. Et que tu ne peux toujours vivre.

Dispose of your property, for you will die. And you cannot live forever.

(Okay, I know this isn't in keeping with the reverent tone I'm trying to establish here, but I took a photo of this guy because once, my nephew Austin drew "angry eyebrows" on his forehead with a Sharpie, so this made me giggle.)