Paris Tourists Attractions


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Paris Tourists Attractions

Paris Tourists Attractions

Twenty metres beneath the streets of Paris, far below the rattling Metro, lay the Catacombs. One descends 130 steps down a narrow, spiral stairwell into silence and darkness; aside from the occasional noisy tourist, the only sound to be heard is the gentle gurgling of some unknown aqueduct, no doubt channelling sources away from the area.

The Creation Of The Catacombs And Ossuary

The Paris Catacombs were created at the end of the 18th century, when sanitary conditions at the Saints-Innocents cemetery at Les Halles became unbearable. After a tireless search, the French government decided upon an abandoned stone quarry, at Denfert-Rochereau, the original gates of the city, just south of the centre.

On 7th April 1786, a procession of chanting priests led a parade of black-covered, bone-laden, horse-drawn wagons through the deserted streets of Paris, bearing the remains of more than six million deceased Parisians to their new resting place at the ossuary. The only exception were those were killed during the French Revolution a few years later, whose bodies are the only remains to have been buried directly in the catacombs.

There, the bones were thrown into the corridors and left; it wasn’t until 1810, that the then ossuary inspector, Hericart de Thury, decided to create a façade of neatly piled skulls and tibias, behind which the remaining bones were left in a heap.

The catacombs have remained a unique, though morbid, tourist attraction since the middle of the 19th century. And there is no question why.

Underneath The Streets Of Paris

Once at the bottom, visitors follow a winding hallway of mortared stone, which leads to a series of sculptures, most of them of the mines before they became an ossuary. There is also a replica of the fortress at Port-Mahon, the largest town on the island of Minorca, which is extremely impressive; it had been sculptured by a quarryman named Decure, who was believed to have been held prisoner at the fortress by the English.