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Catacombes et Carrières

Le Lapin Agile

Sacré-Coeur
Montparnasse

The middle of April, 2002, continued.

Old limestone and gypsum quarries extend under almost all of Paris.

From the 12th century onwards, the raw materials found underground were vital in the construction of the city above, even as removing them brought danger. In 1774 a large collapse destroyed buildings near Enfert Street.

In 1777 the l'Inspection Générale des Carrières started to map the mines, usually by digging under each street. Less than ten years later the overcrowding of the cemeteries, with their diseases and resulting epidemics, forced the clergy to give blessings over the transfer of the interred remains to the newly-mapped quarries. The catacomb ossuary was born.

It's now estimated that the bones of between five and six million people are in the combined ossuaries.

We take the Metro to place Denfert-Rochereau, then head across the street to a suprisingly hard-to-find entrance. The sign on the door-post reads ARRETE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT (WARNING! THIS IS THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD [or OF DEATH]). We enter.

The ossuary ceilings are remarkably low. My head just brushes them; from time to time it doesn't just miss. Ow!

Isaac takes no notice of our surroundings, preferring to play with one of several toys we've attached to our backpack.

Here's a close-up of on of the "walls" of the ossuary. It's both eerie and commonplace, unusual and mundane. By the end of the tour I'm noticing other features of the former quarry, and thinking about things like rainwater seeping through the catacomb, destroying the ossuary.

At the exit we see NON METUIT MORTEM, QUI SCIT CONTEMNERE VITAM (WHO DESPISES LIFE DOTH NOT FEAR TO DIE). The only reference to this I could find was in an old Latin text, the Disticha Catonis, a book of moral advice, used by Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400).

Now we head off to Le Lapin Agile, and after that to my favorite place in Paris.

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