Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp in the Catacombs of Paris
The Catacombs of Paris or Catacombes de Paris are a famous underground ossuary in Paris, France. Located south of the city's former "Barrière d'Enfer" city gate (at today's Denfert-Rochereau), the ossuary fills a renovated section of caverns and tunnels that are the remains of Paris' stone mines. Opened in the late 18th century, the underground cemetery became a tourist attraction on a small scale from the early 19th century, and has been open to the public on a regular basis from 1867. Following an incident of vandalism, they were closed to the public for an indefinite amount of time in September, 2009.[1]
The official name for the catacombs is l'Ossuaire Municipal. Although this cemetery covers only a small section of underground tunnels comprising "les carrières de Paris" ("the quarries of Paris"), Parisians today often refer to the entire tunnel network as "the catacombs".
History
Background: Parisian cemeteries
Paris since Roman times buried its dead to the outskirts of the city, but this changed with the rise of Christianity and its practice of burying its faithful deceased in consecrated ground in and adjoining its churches. By the 10th century, because of the city's expansion over the centuries, there were many parish cemeteries within city limits, even in central locations. When Paris' population began to rise rapidly in the following centuries, some of these cemeteries became overcrowded where expansion was impossible. Soon only the most wealthy could afford church burials, which led to the opening in the early 12th century of a central burial ground for more common burials: initially dependant upon the St. Opportune church, this cemetery near Paris' central Les Halles district was renamed as the 'Saints-Innocents cemetery' under its own church and parish towards the end of the same century.
The practice common then for burying the lesser-wealthy dead was mass inhumation. Once an excavation in one section of the cemetery was full, it would be covered over and another opened. Few of the dead buried in this way had the privilege of coffins; often the casket used for a burial ceremony would be re-used for the next. Thus the residues resulting from the decaying of organic matter, a process often chemically accelerated with the use of lime, entered directly into the earth, creating a situation quite unacceptable for a city whose then principle source of liquid sustenance was well-water.
By the 17th century the sanitary conditions around Saints-Innocents cemetery was unbearable. As it was one of Paris' most sought-after cemeteries and a large source of revenue for the parish and church, the clergy had continued burials there even when its grounds were filled to overflowing. By then the cemetery was lined on all four sides with "charniers" reserved for the bones of the dead exhumed from mass graves that had "lain" long enough for all the flesh they contained to decompose. Once emptied, a mass sepulture would be used again, but even then the earth was already filled beyond saturation with decomposable human remains.
A series of ineffective decrees limiting the use of the cemetery did little to remedy the situation, and it wasn't until the late 18th century that it was decided to create three new large-scale suburban burial grounds to the outskirts of the city, and to condemn all existing parish cemeteries within city limits.
Paris' former Mines
Part of the reason nothing was done about Paris' untenable burial practices was a lack of ideas where to dispose of the dead exhumed from Paris' intra-muros parish graveyards. The government had been searching for and consolidating long abandoned stone quarries in and around the Capital since 1777, and it was the Police Lieutenant General overseeing the renovations, Alexandre Lenoir, who first had the idea to use empty underground tunnels to the outskirts of the capital to this end. His successor, Thiroux de Crosne, chose a place to the south of Paris' "porte d'Enfer" city gate (the place Denfert-Rochereau today), and the exhumation and transfer of all Paris' dead to the underground sepulture began in 1786.
Creation, decoration
From the eve of a consecration ceremony on the 7th April the same year, behind a procession of chanting priests, began a parade of black-covered bone-laden horse-drawn wagons that continued for years to come. In work overseen by the Inspector General of Quarries, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, the bones were deposited in a wide well dug in land bought from a property, "La maison de la Tombe Issoire" (a house near the street of the same name), and distributed throughout the underground caverns by workers below. Also deposited near the same house were crosses, urns and other necropolis memorabilia recuperated from Paris' church graveyards.
The catacombs in their first years were practically only a bone repository, but Guillaumot's successor from 1810, Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury, oversaw the renovations that would transform the underground caverns into a real and visitable sepulture on par with any mausoleum. In addition to directing the rearrangement of skulls and tibias into the arrangement that we see in the catacombs today, he used the tombstones and cemetery decorations he could find (many had disappeared after the 1789 Revolution) to compliment the walls of bones.
General Description
The Catacombs entry, today open to guided tours for a nominal fee, is in the western pavilion of Paris' former Barrière d'Enfer city gate. After descending a narrow spiral stone stairwell of 19 metres to the darkness and silence broken only by the gurgling of a hidden aqueduct channelling local sources away from the area, and after passing through a long and twisting hallway of mortared stone, a visitor finds himself before a sculpture that existed from a time before this part of the mines became an ossuary, a model of France's Port-Mahon fortress created by a former Quarry Inspector. Soon after, one finds himself before a stone portal, the ossuary entry, graced with the inscription "Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la Mort" ('Stop, this is the empire of Death').
Beyond begin the halls and caverns of walls of carefully arranged bones. Some of the arrangements are almost artistic in nature, such as a heart-shaped outline in one wall formed with skulls embedded in surrounding tibias; another is a round room whose central pillar is also a carefully created 'keg' bone arrangement. Along the way one can find other 'monuments' created in the years before catacomb renovations, such as a source-gathering fountain baptised "La Samaritaine" because of later-added engravings. Also worthy of note are the rusty gates blocking passages leading to other 'unvisitable' parts of the catacombs - many of these are either un-renovated or too un-navigable for regular tours.
In a cavern just before the exit stairway leading to a building on the rue Dareau (former 'rue des Catacombes') above, one can see an example of the Quarry Inspection's work in the rest of Paris' underground caverns: its roof is two 11-metre high domes of naturally degraded, but reinforced, rock; the dates painted into the highest point of each bear witness to what year the work to the collapsing cavern ceiling was done, and whether it has degraded since. These "fontis" were the reason for a general panic in late-18th-century Paris, after several houses and roadways collapsed into previously unknown caverns below.
Other Inhumations
Bodies of the dead from the riots in the Place de Grève, the Hotel de Brienne, and Rue Meslee were put in the catacombs on 28 and 29 August 1788.
Bone pile in Parisian Catacombs
The catacomb walls are covered in graffiti dating from the eighteenth century onwards. Victor Hugo used his knowledge about the tunnel system in Les Misérables. In 1871, communards killed a group of monarchists in one chamber. During World War II, Parisian members of the French Resistance used the tunnel system. Also during this period, German soldiers established an underground bunker in the catacombs below Lycée Montaigne, a high school in the 6th arrondissement.
In popular culture
Books
- In Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum, the catacombs were the resting place of a parchment concerning the Knights Templar.
- In Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night, two characters investigating the murders of London vampires descend into the catacombs. There they find Brother Anthony, a 600-year-old priest-turned-vampire, living among the bones of the dead.
- In Robison Wells's novel The Counterfeit, the catacombs are the location of a meeting place of the Illuminati. The main characters, Eric and Rebekah, are guided through the catacombs by three cataphiles.
- William T. Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means begins with a section titled "Three Medititations on Death". The first meditation, entitled "Catacomb Thoughts", is a reflection on the Catacombs of Paris.
- In Mr. Monk is Miserable by Lee Goldberg, based on the television series Monk, detective Adrian Monk and his assistant, Natalie Teeger, are taking a vacation in Paris when, during a tour of the catacombs, Monk sees a skull belonging to a recently murdered man hidden amongst the old bones.
Film and television
External links
References
Coordinates: 48°50′02.43″N 2°19′56.36″E / 48.8340083°N 2.3323222°E / 48.8340083; 2.3323222
