By Roy Stevenson
I’ll never forget my first visit to Paris. After walking around overwhelmed with her collective magnificence and splendor, it took me a few days to start focusing on the individual beauty of her architecture. Elaborately carved creamy pale yellow colored limestone buildings, bridges, sidewalks, monuments, museums and apartments distract your eye wherever you walk.
It wasn’t until I’d made several trips to Paris and finally visited the underground Catacombs that I finally figured it out-it comes from beneath Paris. Underneath Paris, the City of Lights, there is a much darker world. Every year over 150,000 morbidly curious people visit part of a labyrinth of 186 miles of eerie ancient subterranean limestone tunnels and mass graves known as the catacombs.
Walking through this huge underground crypt is like entering another realm where the surreal is normal, amidst enormous piles of macabre grinning skulls and aged yellowed bones. This bizarre necropolis contains the bones of 6 million bodies. Gruesome scenes that even the big budget horror movies would have difficulty creating. And its real.
Everything about these catacombs is unusual. You buy your ticket at a small counter. A nearby sign warns you that this visit is not for claustrophobics, or people faint of heart, or people with emotional problems: you enter at your own risk.
You think “is this just hype to intrigue the visitor”?
Descend to the Land of the Long Dead
Then you descend a long, seemingly bottomless, narrow metal spiral staircase of 130 stairs. You’re now 20 meters under the streets of Paris. A small chamber at the end of the staircase is a mini-museum with photographs and signs that tell you the history of the catacombs.
In 1785 millions of bodies were exhumed from mass graves in Paris’ cemeteries and dumped into the catacombs-six million of them over the next few years. Most came from a cemetery called Les Innocents in the area now known as Les Halles where 4 million bodies were interred in the 400 years up to 1785.
The king had the bodies removed from Les Innocents to the quarries of Denfert-Rochereau, which at that time was outside the Paris boundaries. It took 15 months to move the bodies, done at nighttime in horse-drawn covered wagons.
The tunnel begins at the museum. It’s cool (a constant 11degrees Celsius), and the damp dimly lit limestone tunnels are oppressive, squeezing the breath out of you as you walk along its long straights, and 90-degree turns.
The absolute quiet is unnerving. You only hear the occasional muted sound of a tourist talking in the distance, water dripping from the ceiling, your breath, and the crunchy sound of gravel under your shoes. You begin to wonder if you’ll ever reach the end of the long tunnel. You pick up your pace to get to the necropolis because you’re starting to feel claustrophobic.
The Denfort Rochereau catacombs are about 1 mile long, and will take you an hour or more to get through. You can comfortably walk through the tunnels, but if you are over 5 feet 8 inches you will find yourself stooping a bit, as the tunnels are only 6 feet high and three feet wide. Dates are inscribed on the walls, indicating when they were excavated-most from the 19th century.
Suddenly you come to a metal grated doorway with a sign saying “Arrete! C’est ici l’empire de la mort”. (Stop! This is the empire of the dead). You enter the Ossuary, or bone gallery. Then it gets really weird. Bones. Bones of tibias, femurs, and grinning skulls piled up everywhere. Bones arranged in orderly mounds by type. Bones layered from the floor to the ceiling right next to you. You can touch them.
You find yourself wondering who this person was, now reduced to a pile of stacked bones passed by thousands of tourists each day. When did they live? How old were they when they died? It’s a very strange and personal experience. Some of the tourists conceal their reactions by joking, posing with a skull in their hand. Others like me walk along quietly trying to get our heads around the whole bizarre scene.
Behind these piles are more bones all the way to the back of the cave-20 feet deep in some places. These are the remainders of the skeletons. None of the bones are identified. Instead, each pile of bones has a sign or plaque listing which cemetery the bodies were moved from and what year they were exhumed.
Adding to the surreal atmosphere, some piles of bones are arranged in artistic patterns and designs; there’s a crucifix made of skulls inset into bones, another crucifix of femurs, a skull and crossbones, and a heart with an arrow through it.
Small dark rooms, niches in the walls, crypts, and memorials lurk off to the sides of the twisting tunnel. Cryptic signs in French and Latin remind you that you too will die one day (“If you have ever seen a man die, remember that one day that fate awaits you”), or remind you of the constant presence of death (“Happy is he who always has the hour of his death before his eyes and is ready to die every day”).
A high-ceilinged “chapel” indicates you are at the end of your underground tour. You climb another long metal spiral staircase, to emerge into a small room. Here you have your backpack searched before exiting. “People don’t really try to take bones, do they”? I ask the young guy. “Oui, monsieur-people try to steal bones and skulls for souvenirs”.
When you open the exit door, you re-enter the bright sunlit streets of Paris, disoriented from your visit to the empire of death. As if this isn’t enough for your reeling mind, you’re totally lost because the exit is a mile from the entrance.
I’ve visited Paris dozens of times and my visit to the catacombs will always remain one of the most memorable sights I’ve ever seen in this beautiful city.
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Roy Stevenson is a freelance writer based in Seattle, Washington. He writes on Travel and Culture, History, Military History, Fitness and Sports, and Film Festival Reviews.
