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June 21, 2005
Death makes room for life...
Written by : "Goddessitta" at Book Of Songs
Friday, June 17, 2005 Catacoma"Ok, I guess my vacation is officially over, now that my travelling companion has winged his way to quieter shores...:-(
This working business takes some getting used to again!
So I thought I'd drop into blogsville, give 'yall some insider's info on some of the cooler places to visit in Paris, tourist-trappiness notwithstanding....
...And n° 1 on my list would be : the CATACOMBS!
The Catacombs are actually a maze , 20 metres below street level, of some 350 km worth of old stone quarries used since Roman times to build Paris. (You can only visit - legally - about 1,7 km of the network).
A couple of years before the French Revolution - that would be 1786ish - the city authorities decided to make more space up above and clear out many of the local cementeries. The earthly remains of their inhabitants were then carefully labeled, cleaned and stacked, with a pretty creepy sense of aesthetic rigeur, into a select number of winding, sepia-lit and humid galleries, that from the beginning of the 19th century onwards were open to the public.
What you now get is this weird combination of pedestrian, eerily intimate morbidity ( the corridors are so narrow that at times you can almost touch skulls on both sides with your outstreched arms) and pompous kitchiness ( in an attempt at preserving the solemnity of the resting-place, the authorities erected stone plaques at regular intervals, in Latin and in French, quoting famous classical and biblical authors on the ultimate nothingness of death and the need to bequeath your material gains before departing the earthly plane...repent, ye Sinners, before ye Meeteth thy Wrathful Maker! ) .I didn't think I'd be so affected by the galleries. But I swear that from the moment I entered, I started feeling a real tight, closing sensation in my chest, and couldn't stand to be alone for more than a few seconds. (For once..thank God for those Asian tourists!) Especially when we neared a more humid corner and could hear the steady drip-drip of condensation dropping down the natural stalagtites(sp?) onto our passing heads...and inflitrating the various bony body parts of the resting companions around me. Much food for thought on the vanity of the human experience...before and after death. And one extra argument in favor of cremation once i get my personal ticket for the Great Kick-Off...
It's estimated that between 5 and 6 MILLION Parisians are now buried in those vaults."
Posted by Ocean at June 21, 2005 11:20 AM