Les Catacombes

Les Catacombes review

By the mid 1780s, Paris's largest cemetery near Les Halles had become so dangerous and insalubrious that it was closed by royal decree. Bones were to be transferred to a disused subterranean quarry beneath what is now avenue René-Coty in the 14th arrondissement. The new ossuaire municipal, better known as the Catacombes, received its first consignment of mortal remains in 1786; this traffic continued well into the 19th century, as the contents of 16 Paris cemeteries were systematically exhumed, transported and reinterred in the Catatcombes. Today, the ossuary is the only portion of the network of tunnels spreading beneath the city that is officially open to the public.

In high season, you may have to queue for up to 90 minutes to get into the catacombs, but it's worth the wait. A damp, cramped tunnel takes you through a series of galleries, remnants
of the old quarry, before you reach the ossuary itself, the entrance to which is announced by a sign egraved in the stone: 'Stop! This is the empire of death.'

Along each wall stand row upon row of tightly packed bones, interspersed with the occasional row of skulls. Fragments of skull and other unidentifiable bits of corporeal detritus are arranged along the top row. In some places, the bones are so densely stacked that they give the impression of a kind of macabre pebble-dashing. Each set of bones is dated and its cemetery of origin marked. There is a good deal of funerary poetry carved into the walls too, much of it defiantly unconsoling. 'Virtuous or vicious,' runs one line, 'man must expire'.

Suitably chastened, you climb towards the surface up an extremely narrow and steep spiral staircase, before emerging, blinking and somewhat unsettled, on to an anonymous backstreet several hundred metres from where you started on place Denfert-Rochereau.