Paris Catacombs - September 2022

I love creepy stuff. My husband likes to joke about how much "dead s*** you have hanging on our walls" - there are at least six dead butterflies displayed, a dead wasp I taxidermied myself, and one porcupine skull that I put in a little cloche, so to be fair, he's not actually wrong. (I currently am also working on a locust and a wasp's nest.) I'm not goth or morose or anything, I just find having a taxidermied baby chick with a second baby chick's head sewn on by someone on Etsy displayed in our dining room to be hilarious... which is why there is one in our dining room. But the point is that it's fun and slightly macabre and mixes somehow with our mid-century vibe to what equals a real strange situation that I enjoy very much. This is all coloring in background for the rest of this post.

When Lisa and I were trying to pick where to go, I'd probably wanted London ideally but had been super open to wherever. She really wanted to visit Paris, so that was our destination - my only caveat was, I didn't care what else we did, I was going to the Paris Catacombs. (Ideally I also wanted to visit Pere Lachaise Cemetery and go see Voltaire's embalmed heart at the library near where we were staying, but was fine not seeing them, so long as I got to see the Paris Catacombs.) I'd been dying to see the Catacombs ever since I saw a documentary about them on the History Channel years prior.

I think most people are aware of the Catacombs, but if not, here's a brief history. In the late 1700s, due to a bunch of health issues, the Paris cemeteries were getting super overcrowded. Like, layering-bodies-on-top-of-each-other-to decompose overcrowded. Being the elegant thinkers the Parisians are, they looked at the streets and thought, "Remember how there are now-empty limestone quarries under there? Let's just hide the bones/bodies of millions of people under these fine Parisian streets and make an ossuary." But again, being fancy, not only did they dump a bunch of bones down there, they made the bones into some incredible designs and decorations. Because art.

So, anyway, back to 2022. It is highly recommended you get tickets to the Catacombs on their official website well in advance, because it sells out really quickly, as it did the day when we went. Luckily, these were literally the first tickets I bought, way before the Louvre or Musee d'Orsay or anything like that, so we'd had our tickets for almost a year. Here are a few photos from the day - please note that they are not good photos, as it's a mix of either really garbage ones from a starter DSLR or my phone.

I think this is my favorite view. There has to be the bones of at least a football stadium's worth of people there, right?

This angle gives you a little bit better view of the pillar's design. Was that design overall necessary? Are those load-bearing skulls and femur bones? I doubt either, and I absolutely love it.

Bonjour, how do you say "I've got your nose" in French?

I think this is a well, but I don't really remember. I don't really want to imagine what the use case is.

I do realize the skulls have nose vacancies because it is largely made of cartilage, but It really looks like someone went around collecting noses like Middle Ages-era Catholics collected genitalia from Roman statues.

I <3 you, too.

In this area, there were just some random tibias thrown up on top. But don't even think about stealing an antique Parisian tibia as a souvenir, because apparently that is a thing people do enough that they frisk you at the end of the tour.

What a beautiful prayer altar made of people's ancestors. How artfully it was displayed.

The Catacombs were awesome, but be aware that there are a lot of stairs. Like, a lot-a lot. I don't know if there's an elevator for accessibility, but this is just an FYI for those with any mobility or pain issues. However, it's super cool. Also, maybe take a jacket, because it gets chilly down in the damp Paris underground.