Dem Bones

I had a lot of plans when I was preparing for Paris but sometimes the coolest things are the ones that aren't planned. One of Tenzig's colleagues from the show mentioned that he wanted to go see the Paris catacombs and invited us along. Death rituals have never scared me and ever since I was a kid I have had a fascination with looking at piles of bones (some good bone piles of my youth: Toraja (Indonesia), Capuchin Catacombs (Sicily)). I wasn't sure what to expect from the catacombs in Paris but I was ready to find out. We hopped on the Metro at Chatelet and made our way to Denfert-Rochereau across the river in the 14th Arrondissement. The entrance is a little hard to find and only marked by a small sign. The fee is only 7 euros and it's pretty low key inside, after going down a stone spiral staircase you arrive unceremoniously in the tunnels lined with piles and piles and piles of bones.


Only a small section of the tunnels are open to the public (I guess people sneak into the restricted areas too though), and as we walked through I caught glimpses of blocked off tunnels branching away into murky blackness. The tunnels are dark and dank and initially a little creepy. The floors in parts are lumpy with tool marks and water drips from the ceiling as you duck though low doorways, I remember thinking that the arrangement of the bones was pretty utilitarian. At one time many of the bones had been moved en masse from a crypt in Les Halles, so efficient use of space seemed to be the primary concern. As we wandered around the corridors, I was looking for flourishes of creativity in the stacks, the kind found in Capuchin churches or saints' reliquaries, without much success. Taking pictures in the dimness made for a lot of blurry shots but one or two would make good album art for a death metal album. I think the most memorable thing about the catacombs is not the volume of bones but the tunnels themselves: a massive network carved out of the bedrock limestone of Paris, it's the kind of thing you dream about discovering as a kid.