What a strange place....part 2
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Remember this thread about the Catacombs of Italy?
Paris has her own version of it too!!
Take a look
Far below the city streets of Paris, in the quiet, damp darkness, seven million Parisians lie motionless. Their skeletons, long since dis-interred from the churchyard graves their survivors left them in, are neatly stacked and aligned to form the walls of nearly one kilometer of walking passage.
Welcome to the Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary-- The Empire of the Dead.
Situated 25 metres under the streets of Paris, this is the french equivalent to the Italian catacombs...
Catacombes established by order of Monsieur Thiroux de Crosne, Lt. General of Police, and by Monsieur Guillaumot, Inspector General of Quarries, 1786. Restored and improved by order of Monsieur Frochot, Secretary of State, Chief of the Department of the Seine, by Monsieur Hericart de Thury, Chief Mining Engineer, Inspector General of Quarries, 1810.
Some bone heaps are more orderly than others. Many skulls are missing all bone below the cranium, and all, it seems, are missing their teeth and lower jaw bones.
This pattern exists throughout the tomb; the wall is composed of the lower chondyls of human femur bones, with a row of skulls about 75cm from the floor, regular patterns of skulls "quilted" along the surface of the wall, and another row of skulls topping it all off.
Shown here is a small bone heap as it looked during the 1700's and 1800's when workmen were emptying the cemeteries and filling the catacombs. The Les Halles district above was suffering from contamination of poor burials and mass graves in the churchyard cemeteries; there was much sickness in the area, and in some cases the ground level in the church yards had risen 10 to 20 feet just from the volume of the human remains in them; something had to be done. The decision was made to discreetly move the bones down here. -
Remains from the Cemetery of St. Nicolas des Champs, placed here August 24, 1804.Here the catacombs are at their wettest; water drips steadily from the ceiling all around us, slowly forming stalactites on the ceiling, and slowly cementing all the bones together with a shiny glaze of limestone rock. Perhaps some day this entire tomb will be a huge fossil.
Bodies from the riots in the Place de Greve, from the Hotel de Brienne, and from Rue Meslee, put here August 28 and 29, 1788.
This 11 meter high gallery was reinforced using a layer of sprayed liquid concrete to prevent the ground above from continuing to fall into the quarry. The concrete was then further strengthened with a masonry arch. Nowadays, the Inspector General of Quarries reinforces dangerous areas with injections of liquid cement, a procedure that can be carried out from the surface. In order to prevent serious accidents, the Inspector General of Quarries restricts building permits in areas located above ancient quarries.
This bell-shaped hall, 11.35 meters high, is named "Cloche de Fontis". Halls like this are frequently the way abandoned quarries erode: the ceiling of the quarry collapses in, leaving the ground above with little support, which in turn collapses into the quarry. This hall was formed this way, and reaches almost to the surface, where its destructive and unannounced arrival could cause a serious accident. This hall was reinforced using a layer of sprayed liquid concrete to avoid further collapse of the sand, clay and limestone (the brown and black layers seen here) of the ground above.
Back on the sunny streets of Paris, you'd never guess the existence of the maze of underground passages below, filled with the remains of those who built the city.
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"After four months of renovation, the catacombs have reopened to chill the bones of visitors once again. Lisa Guerard invites us to discover the most macabre site in Paris.
'Stop! This is the Empire of Death', the sign in French declares as you walk into the catacomb's ossuary. Being easily sacred, I've never been one to go into the haunted house at the fun fair or watch horror movies, so I was quite surprised to find myself about to walk into dark tunnels filled with millions of skeletal remains. Yet, Parisian death, as in many forms of Parisian life, has been made into an art form in these dank subterranean passages. Throughout the 1.7 km walk, skulls, tibias and femurs are stacked in amazingly neat symmetric patterns creating thick, gruesome walls. The unexpected and uncontrollable sense of death has been removed here - all is in perfect order - so the atmosphere is more reminiscent of an eerie, and rather fantastic, art installation than of ghosts, ghouls and horror.
In the 18th century, Paris had serious problems with overflowing cemeteries and the consequential disease outbreaks. In 1785 disused stone quarries were converted into catacombs to help remedy the situation. At night, the remains of these unsanitary cemeteries were exhumed and transported to the catacombs at Denfert-Rochereau. This process continued on until 1860, when finally, the remains of around 6 million Parisians were laid to rest there.
Nowadays, while making your way though the passages, the new regular lighting allows you to see not only the millions of skulls and bones but also the plaques indicating which cemetery they came from, and when they arrived in the catacombs. On stone tablets, crypts and tombs there are philosophical quotations in Latin and French to remind that life is short and death is inevitable: "Happy is he who always has the hour of his death before his eyes and is ready to die every day."
The dead have not been the only ones to lay claim to these underground warrens. Although located mainly in the 13th and 14th arrondissements, there have been catacombs throughout Paris that have been put to various uses. Charles X had subterranean parties in the catacombs just before the 1830 revolution, Balzac apparently escaped his creditors through them, and the French Resistance used them as hideouts in World War II. Since the 1980s, 'cataphiles' - or people who like to hang out in catacombs - have been renowned for finding obscure entrances into the tunnels and having illicit parties.
Back at Denfert-Rochereau and 25 metres underground, street signs indicate the exact equivalents overhead, yet this macabre walk seemed a million miles away from the hubbub of Paris above. Going deeper into the catacombs, the ceilings get damper, and footsteps are punctuated by the sound of dripping water. In the quiet, still gloom, surrounded by human remains, the atmosphere felt strangely calming. As the ossuary came to an end with the sign 'Non Metuit Mortem', I realized that rather than quaking throughout this subterranean journey, my afternoon with the dead had been rather enjoyable. " -
Dunno you guys still remember a TV series, I my memory serve me correctly should be , and they feature the Paris Catacombs and they explore the unexplored regions of the catacombs, dammn scary...
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yesOriginally posted by octega:Dunno you guys still remember a TV series, I my memory serve me correctly should be , and they feature the Paris Catacombs and they explore the unexplored regions of the catacombs, dammn scary...
they also explored the Italian Capuchins' Catacombs located in Palermo.