Paris Catacombs
Before the Paris Catacombs existed, Paris had a health and safety problem linked to the city’s cemeteries. They came up with a solution: to protect the living, they had to move the dead.
In 1780, Paris’s largest cemetery, the Saints-Innocents cemetery, closed after 10 centuries of consecutive use, when a basement wall in an adjoining property collapsed due to the weight of the mass grave behind it. Clearly, Paris’s cemeteries were no longer fit for purpose. There had to be somewhere else they could bury the dead. The former Tombe-Issoire quarries under Montrouge was the perfect location. The quarries formed part of an 800 hectare labyrinth under the city. They were in use from the 15th century then subsequently abandoned. Charles Axel Guillaumot, an inspector at the Department of General Quarry Inspection, prepared the site and oversaw the transfer of the remains.
Moving Day
Excavatation took place from 1785-1787. They emptied the common graves, tombs and charnel houses under the cover of darkness to avoid hostility from the Parisian public and the Church. The bones were put into two quarry wells. The quarry workers distributed them and piled them into galleries.
Transfer of the remains continued after the French revolution until 1814, with the dead being removed from Saint-Eustache, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, and the Bernardins Convent. The transfer resumed in 1840, during Louis-Philippe’s urban renovation and the Haussmannian reconfiguration of the city. On April 7th 1786, they named the burial site ‘The Paris Municipal Ossuary’, but it became known as the Catacombs, after the Roman catacombs. The origin of the word catacomb isn’t clear. In Rome, we learned it came from meaning ‘by the quarry.’ Etymon Online suggests it could come from the Latin “cata” meaning “among” and “tumbas” the plural of “tombs”. By 1836, “catacomb” meant any subterranean receptacle of the dead.
Death Imitating Art
Inspector Héricart de Thury transformed the site from a pile of bones to extensive decorative rearrangement. Rows of tibiae and femurs alternate with skulls, and smaller bones hidden behind this ‘wall’. He installed masonry monuments in Antique and Egyptian styles, in the shape of Doric Columns, altars, steles and tombs. Some areas received religious, Romantic or Antique names: Lacrymatory Sarcophagus; Samaritan Fountain; and Sepulchral Lamp. There is a heart made from skulls. Héricart added two cabinets, one dedicated to minerology, and the other to pathology, built in the style of cabinets of curiosities. He wanted to add an educational element to his work. The pathology cabinet displayed specimens relating to bone illnesses and deformations, established by the research of Dr Michel-Augustin Thouret in 1789. Plaques featuring religious and poetic texts throughout the ossuary encourage introspection and meditation on death.
Science of Death
Not long after the Paris Catacombs opened, two researchers from the French Museum of Natural History, did separate studies. Botanist Jaques Maheu, studied the flora in the dark environment, and speleologist and naturalist, Armand Viré, discovered the existence of cave-dwelling crustaceans. In 1813, Héricart did his own research by putting four goldish in the Samaritan Fountain. The fish survived but were unable to reproduce, and sadly went blind. In 1861, Félix Tournachon, known as Nadar, spent three months experimenting with taking the first shots by artificial light. The darkness required a long posing time, so he used dummies in place of human workers. Pathological research continues even today. Preserving the bones in the humid underground is challenging, especially with the delicate balance of respecting human remains whilst at the same time, promoting the geological, archaeological and historical heritage.
In 1809, the catacombs opened to the public by appointment, and a register placed at the end for visitors to document their impressions. The register quickly filled as the French and foreigners all came to see the catacombs. Now, the Paris Catacombs welcomes around 550,000 visitors every year. Paris has a population of just over 2 million residing in the city of love, whilst there are more than 6 million skeletons residing below in the underground city of the dead.
Read about our visit to the Paris Catacombs.
Sources:
https://www.catacombes.paris.fr/en/history/site-history