The Kingdom of the Dead

This past Thursday morning, Ali, Megan, Steph B, and I decided to go to the Catacombs. What are they? Well, sit down and stay a while and I'll tell you a little story:

There was once a little city called Paris (although way back in the day, it was called Lutèce). It was just the right size for the number of Parisians that lived within its walls, and during those sad times when people passed away, there was plenty of space for them to be buried in church cemeteries and city cemeteries.
However, as the city continued to grow and flourish, and as the beautiful buildings added more floors with more windows adorned with flowerboxes, there were soon too many people for the ground to hold. People were buried above other people from years before, and there was nowhere for the corpses to go. The smell of rotting flesh filled the streets and alleyways and in some terrible cases, after a heavy rainfall, Parisians would go down into their unfinished old basements to find that with the collapsing dirt, bodies had fallen into their homes. It was unbearable. Beginning in 1785, the government ordered that the bones and remains of people buried long ago be moved into the quarries below the ground of what used to be just outside of Paris which now constitute the region far below the sidewalks and streets in the 14e arrondissement of Montparnasse in the modern-day city of Paris.

Today, these shadowed rooms of bones and cold, dark corridors of stone, clay, and ancient dust are known as Les Catacombes. We took the metro to Montparnasse and crossed the street to enter this tiny tiny tiny closet of a green painted building next to a church that had the sign in the picture above. The tour began with a 20-meter vertical distance which we travelled via an incredibly tiny, steep, spiral staircase. After some introductory information, we began our walk through one of the most eerie spaces I have ever been in. It was dark and the temperature got immediately colder as we went further into the Catacombs.
Beginning in the early 19th century, the Catacombs were made accessible to the public as their curiosity as to what lay below their feet in the old quarries grew. The picture on the left shows a black line painted above our heads in the rock corridors. This was to show people how to get through and out of the Catacombs. Before this line was painted in, there were times when people would enter the Catacombs and get lost, and die either from starving to death, freezing to death, or getting trapped somewhere with little oxygen. Yeah. Today, there is only one way to get through the Catacombs as all other corridors have been blocked off with cast-iron gates. There have also been emergency exits installed in case one of the bodies re-assembles itself from the bones down there and proceeds to terrorize one of the tour groups. Just kidding.
There was also a very weird part of the Catacombs in which a veteran of King Louis XV's army, known only by the name Décure, made a series of rock carvings based on his experience as a prisoner of the British army in the fortress of Port-Mahon. The picture on the right shows part of the carving series.

I was starting to get really annoyed because the tour guide would stop at random nondescript locations and say a lot of random facts and overly detailed information. It had been over an hour and I wanted to see the freaking tombs already. Finally, we arrived. On the left, a picture of me and Steph B showing how nervous/scared we are right next to the front door of the ossuary. To the right is a picture of an engraving that reads "ARRETE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT" which translates to "STOP! HERE LIES THE KINGDOM OF THE DEAD".

Now, I for some reason didn't think about the fact that it's called an ossuary for a reason. Not a cemetery, not a tomb, an ossuary. As in, like a bone garden. So, really, I shouldn't have been surprised when I walked through that doorway, but quite honestly, if we hadn't just gotten a huge talk in French from the guide about being respectful of the deceased and stuff, I would probably have screamed/shat myself. Take a look.

These were literally just piles and piles and piles of bones and skulls. Everywhere. For like 15 minutes of the walk through the Catacombs. Rooms and rooms of bones from cemeteries around Paris. And it was incredibly cool/creepy. There were some tombs here and there. The tomb shown to the left is the tomb of a poet named Gilbert, possibly the most depressing, macabre, dark poet that I have ever read EVER. Perfectly appropriate for the Catacombs. There were citations from his writing engraved in the rock all over the place. One of them read "Si vous avez vu quelquefois mourir un homme considerez toujours que le même vous attend." Which translates to, "If you have ever seen a man die, always remember that the same fate awaits you." Geez.

We spent 2 freaking hours down there. A little long, I'd say. It was creepy. It was cold. It was depressing and a little gross. It was scary. And it put us in the mood for falafel. So, we went to the Jewish Quarter (les Marais/Quartier Juif) and got falafel at the most famous falafel place in Paris called "L'As de Falafel". Yum.