France, especially Paris, has always had a mystique about it. There is something about France that conjures images of picturesque countrysides, great wine, wonderful food. Even death, when done in french style, has that same feeling.
The catacombs were begun in Roman times. They were a quarry for limestone for building. After the fall of the Roman empire, they fell into disuse. In the 11th century the Catacombs were reopened to provide more limestone, to continue the building of Paris. When the digging ceased, they had created 300 kilometers of tunnels under the city (that's 186 miles, for the metrically challenged). In the late 1700's building space inside the city was at a premium, and it was decided that all the graveyards inside the city should be used for building. Before they could be used as such, the remains in the graveyards had to be transferred to a safe location. The Catacombs were a perfect place. Today, the remains of between 5 and 7 million individuals lie in the tunnels under Paris.
To get there, you have to descend 180 steps and walk through narrow tunnels for about a kilometer. Then you reach the ossuaries...
Throughout
the ossuary, you see this scene. Skulls and femurs, neatly and
creatively stacked, make up the front wall. Behind them, the rest
of the bones are in a jumbled pile. In some places the space
between the front row
and catacomb wall is only a few feet. In this particular
location, it
is more than 40 feet to the far wall. This was a particularly
large
graveyard.
Sheila
and myself, with a few thousand friends.
(Sorry
we don't have more pictures of this really cool place, but you were not
supposed
to take pictures...)
Cimetere du Pere La Chaise
Located outside of the city center of Paris, this graveyard is very large and very cool. However, there is only one reason that 95% of all Americans travel to see this graveyard. Here it is:
The
most visited grave in the cemetery
(and
the only grave that has a guard).
There
are other famous people buried here...
This
is the grave of Fredrich Chopin.
Obviously,
he is still popular.
Other
graves appear to have been neglected for a century or more.
There
are many delightfully creepy sculptures presiding over graves all over
the
cemetery. Most look mournful, like those above. Others are
just
sorta creepy.
Each
corner of the stone casket is being supported by a bat-winged
skull. The image below the casket shows the living on the right
being summoned by
the dead on the left. Death flies overhead, blowing a trumpet.
A
long time ago, somebody thought it might be a nice idea to plant a
sapling on this child's grave...
