The Catacombs

The first thing that I was surprised with was the length. In total the Catacombs was over 2 Kms of walking in confining underground tunnels, weaving through passageways, and ornately stacked bones. But that’s only the part that is open to the public. From what I understood, the Catacombs used to be ancient mines that stretched back to the Roman times, and there are hundreds of Kilometers worth of such mine tunnels underneath the city. From Wikipedia: “Since Roman times, Paris buried its dead on the outskirts of the city, but this changed with the rise of Christianity and its practice of burying its faithful deceased in consecrated ground in and adjoining its churches. By the 10th century, because of the city's expansion over the centuries, there were many parish cemeteries within city limits, even in central locations. When Paris' population began to rise rapidly in the following centuries, some of these cemeteries became overcrowded where expansion was impossible. Soon only the most wealthy could afford church burials, which led to the opening in the early 12th century of a central burial ground for more common burials.”


This mass burial area eventually became over crowded, and inorder to make room for more burials, the bones were removed and stored in the catacombs. At first they were thrown in, however, after time they were organized and stacked in artistic ways. So artistic, when my grandpa Gunn led a tour through the catacombs, he was so ecstatic about what he saw, the members of the tour went and bought him a skull as thanks. (Thats a Bone-efied true story!) The line above Mikaelas head in the picture was a line for people to use so they wouldnt get lost. The other interesting factoids are Louis the XVI threw parties down in the catacombs when he was in power, and during WWII the french resistance fighters used them as their headquarters- making it an "underground movement"


The catacombs are a surreal experience. Literally millions of people are buried down there, and plenty of stone monuments in morbid French give you a preview of coming attractions…

I wont go into Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” stuff, but needless to say, the eerie feeling went away as soon as I stepped back into the sunlight and back to the land of the living.