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Blog No 29 The Catacombs of Paris

Tunnel at the beginning

At the end of our 17-day tour of the northwest African coastal region, Michele and I flew from Marrakesh, Morocco to Paris for the last leg of our trip. Both Michele and Megan urged me to visit the Paris Catacombs, something I had missed on my previous visits. I walked from our hotel to the Chatelet les Halles metro station, a bewildering underground network, and when I asked a young man for directions (he spoke little English) he motioned for me to follow him as he was going to my train.

I managed to find the entrance with a little extra time for my time-slot ticket. I had been given dire warnings of the steep stairway, but found it easy compared to the tower I had climbed in Siena, Italy, or St. Patrick’s Well I had descended into in Orvieto (written about in a previous blog). We walked single-file for 15 minutes through an ancient limestone tunnel with a constant temperature of 55⁰ F before we finally arrived at the ossuary.

During the Catacombs tour you walk along only a fraction of the vast labyrinth of unground tunnels on the Left Bank that date as far back as Roman times. Beginning in the 12^th century Parisians mined gypsum (Plaster of Paris) and Lutetian limestone, a light-colored limestone used in historic Parisian buildings, including the Louvre and Notre Dame. Previously, the tunnels were explored by cataphiles, a secretive subculture that banned leaving trash, and held underground parties, but these tunnel have been restricted by the government since 1955. Beginning in the 1700’s, the cemeteries became overcrowded, resulting in pollution of ground water causing foul odors to the residents, and the solution was to move the bones to the underground catacombs.

As I walked through the ossuary (total length about a mile) I was spellbound by rows of neatly stacked tibia bones interspersed with skulls that lined the walls of the tunnel. Circular openings could be seen in the boney wall where a visitor had pilfered a skull. I noticed one skull with a trephination in the frontal bone had smooth edges, evidence that the person had survived the operation. I write extensively about trephinations performed by Inca surgeons, and about a new theory why they had performed them, in my memoir. I was given earphones to listen to a narrative that was synced to my position in the passageway. I saw several crosses, and when we came to the bones of the people who had been killed during the French Revolution, they received a special tribute.

As I passed an endless display of bones and skulls along the tunnel, I began to wonder about the lives of some 6 million people, whether they had been wealthy or penniless, how they had made their living, and how they had died. I was overcome with intense emotion that I had not expected, and I consider this experience something that should not be missed.