Catacombs of Paris

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. Its entrance is located near the Denfert-Rochereau station of the Paris Métro. Organized in a renovated section of the city's vast network of subterranean tunnels and caverns towards the end of the 18^th century, it became a tourist attraction on a small scale from the early 19^th century and has been open to the public on a regular basis from 1867. The official name for the catacombs is l'Ossuaire Municipal.

This cemetery covers a portion of Paris' former mines near the Left Bank's Place Denfert-Rochereau, in a location that was just outside the city gates before Paris expanded in 1860. Although this cemetery covers only a small section of underground tunnels comprising "les carrières de Paris" ("the quarries of Paris"), Parisians today popularly refer to the entire network as "the catacombs".

History

Paris Catacombs

Most of Paris's larger churches once had their own cemeteries, but city growth and generations of dead began to overwhelm them. From the late seventeenth century, Paris' largest Les Innocents cemetery (near the Les Halles district in the middle of the city) was saturated to a point where its neighbours were suffering from disease, due to contamination caused by improper burials, open mass graves, and earth charged with decomposing organic matter.

After almost a century of ineffective decrees condemning the cemetery, it was finally decided to create three new large-scale suburban cemeteries and to condemn all existing within the city limits; the remains of all condemned cemeteries would be moved discreetly to a renovated section of Paris's abandoned quarries. The use of the depleted quarries for the storage of bones, based on the idea of Police Lieutenant General Alexandre Lenoir, was established in 1786 by his successor, M. Thiroux de Crosne, under the direction of Charles Axel Guillaumot, Inspector General of Quarries, and following him, by Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury.

Remains from the cemetery of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs were among the first to be moved. 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.

The underground tunnels and chambers have long posed safety problems for construction in Paris. Quarries sometimes cave in, occasionally resulting in a hole in the ground above and causing damage to buildings. To prevent this, the IGC, Inspection générale des Carrières (General Inspection of the Quarries), was established in 1777 by the government to monitor the current quarries and prohibit the digging of new quarries. The IGC did, however, dig observation tunnels to provide themselves with better access to the quarries so that they might better monitor, repair, and map the consolidated quarries.

The monitoring and consolidation work has continued to this day. Because of the number of quarries, subway, train, and sewer tunnels that have been dug underneath Paris, as well as the softness of the stone involved, extra caution is taken when new construction is attempted or new tunnels are dug. However, this did not prevent problems during the digging of Paris Métro Line 14.

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.

Catacombs of Paris

• In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), Montressor walls up another man inside a cavity, deep within some catacombs, which are described as being "lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris."
• 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

• The film Les Gaspards was filmed in and revolves around the catacombs.
• The 2007 film Catacombs is set in the catacombs.
• In the Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the catacombs are used by Captain Phoebus and Quasimodo to find the Court of Miracles.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Catacombs of Paris

• (English) Catacombs of Paris Museum - The Catacombes de Paris official site, in English
• (English) L'Empire de la Mort - Ghosts and History of the Catacombs of Paris - L'Empire de la Mort - Ghosts and History of the Catacombs of Paris, in English
• (English) "A tour of the dark world beneath the city of lights" by Murray Battle

Coordinates: 48°50′02.43″N 2°19′56.36″E / 48.8340083°N 2.3323222°E / 48.8340083; 2.3323222