Welcome to the weirder side of Paris. Beneath the fashion houses, people riding bikes and picnics by the Eiffel Tower exists a 200 mile long mass grave. This was probably the coolest part of my trip. Disclaimer: Only a small part is open to the public. I didn't walk 200 miles looking at human remains!
I am not going to give you a history lesson on the Catacombs but I'll link you to the wikipedia page if you want to find out more context that I have provided. It is also important to note that besides History, the Catacombs are cool geographically! For any Geography geeks, they are situated on 'limestone rich deposits' so you will see lost of stalecmites/tites too. It's like a humanity students dream day out, Geography and History all in one go.
The Catacombs are the most macabre thing I have ever experienced and the feelings that arose were conflicting. Part of me thought 'this is so cool look at all of these bodies arranged in pretty patterns, look at the symmetry between the rows of skulls!' and then every so often I realised 'Oh fuck these are real human remains.' The thing is, seeing skeletons is not like seeing a corpse. Without flesh and organs it is very easy to dehumanise the remains. Further, because the remains are not arranged as whole bodies but rather in patterns like some sort of art, it seems even less real. And the realisation that you are walking amongst people, who once, albeit long ago, were someones brother/sister/mother/father comes regularly and sends shivers down the spine. Part of you wants to enjoy this raw history in front of you and use your GCSE French to decode the writings above tunnels. But the other part somewhere can't help but humanise the ossements which leaves a feeling that I have only felt in the catacombs and struggle to describe.
Also, there is so much graffiti. Many of the skulls have 'James and Anna 2012' sharpied onto the forehead and you will think 'What the fuck James and Anna, was a love lock on the bridge not enough for you guys?' I spoke to a Historian friend about this and she taught me that a lot of graffiti is actually really old. It isn't a new concept as we often think but actually began way back in the 6th Century. My friend Wikipedia says 'The term graffiti referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii.' Thus some of the engraved graffiti (obviously not good old James and Anna with their sharpie) is a lot older than one may have imagined. Graffiti began in Catacombs as such.
I visited the Catacombs after I visited The Louvre (see previous post for pictures/reflections). I spoke a lot about Marie Antoinette in that post and how I loved her beautiful bedroom and trinkets. But actually, this seemed to be the other side of revolutionary France. The direct contrast to the beauty of the bourgeoisie. These were the civilians, the revolutionaries, piled up and dehumanised. There is a certain authenticity of the representation of both sides of French History in these two museums which I think should be admired.
Is this the geekiest post I've ever written? Probably.
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