City Built On Bones

I'm not particularly referring to the way in which everyone, regardless of all the baguettes, is skeletal.

I'm talking about the fact that they are so overcrowded that they literally just shoved their dead under ground.

We went today to The Catacombs.

This was an all around positive experience; I got to see human expiration, we bonded with some elderly Americans, and the money spent will be reimbursed by good ol' St Johnny.

Well, not my ham and cheese crepe, but everything else will.

So, upon retreating the metro at our designated stop, we see the sign to the Catacombs. I expected a scene of biblical similarities: a cave with a round rock pushed aside and blood stained robes on the floor.

(I'm so Catholic, when did this happen?)

Uh, no. It was a little building plopped on a busy city intersection. Since all these remains were such a health burden to the mortal neighbors in 1785, they were removed from their original place of rest in the Cimetiére des Saints-Innocents into these out-of-use limestone quarries.

100 more windy Parisian steps underground...and Behold! We encountered long narrow walkways with sporadic and recently installed lighting fixtures. That's all. We walked and walked up and down these corridors creating a scene suitable for the Mummy 4 (dad, don't buy it) until we finally got to a sign: "No Flash."

Um, it's dark down here and I've been taking pictures this entire time.

But now, I guess they didn't want to upset the spirits. We had reached the big finale of these crypts and were standing before hundreds of thousands of human bones stacked in strategic rows.

HUMAN. BONES.

I had to convince myself that I'd be possessed if I had touched one, or I would have been caressing so many skulls. My judgement was telling me for some reason that would be inappropriate.

Unlike the cemetery at Normandy, you actually did get that creeped out air being down there. It was dark and wet, just like any ancient tomb that had ever been depicted through Hollywood sets.  Down here, however, the best part about these bodies was that even though their pre-final resting place actually turned into a germ breeding ground that threatened the living with their own premature demise, these bones belonged to people who had mostly carried out their life in a normal fashion. They were just some Paris people, buried in a Paris grave, after a very Paris life. That was the whole beauty of it.

But that means they probably would enjoy a good haunting. Unfortunately, I didn't see any ghosts down there. Maybe the Italian souls in the Rome Catacombs will be a little more social.