Monday Postcard from the Catacombs of Paris

1. Beneath the city of Paris lie the remains of 6 million people, bones that were transferred from cemeteries all around the city to these underground rock quarries, originally tunneled to source the limestone from which the city is built.

2. The Catacombs were established as ossuaries in the 18th century, when the main cemetery of Paris – the Cimetière des Saints-Innocents – caved in. While originally the Catacombs were nothing more than a disorganized pile of bones, in the early 19th century, they were transformed into a visitable mausoleum, complete with inscriptions – not only of where the bones originally came from, but quotes from the Bible and famous literature referring to the dead. This is the first inscription you see upon entering the ossuary portion of the Catacombs: “Stop! The empire of the dead is here.”

3. The bones have been arranged into decorative patterns throughout the tunnels: hearts, crosses, and motifs like this one can be found throughout. But above these walls, as you can see, lie piles of shattered and damaged bones. Similarly, the visitable portion of the Catacombs is only a fraction of the true scope of these tunnels. Catacomb enthusiasts known as cataphiles illegally explore the rest of the quarries, and in 2004, police even found a fully equipped movie theater in one of the caverns.

4. The tunnels are damp and dark, and fungus has grown on some of the skeletons. Actually, the proliferation of fungus has been a benefit in the past, when the Catacombs were home to the first mushroom farms in the city of Paris.

5. This is probably the most famous and most photographed installation of the Catacombs, a tower of bones built around a stone tower. Famous residents of the Catacombs include French Revolutionaries Danton and Robespierre and, due to a mixup with his remains, possibly fabulist Jean de la Fontaine. Of course, as Gavroche would say, “Everybody’s equal when they’re dead;” there is no way of telling who is who, in the Catacombs.