Paris Catacombes

Thursday morning we decided to go off the beaten path. We took the subway out to Denfert-Rouchereau Station to see "The Cimetiere des Innocents (Cemetery of the Innocents). Paris has a huge underground graveyard. Around 1785 the cemeteries in Paris were over crowded, and the decaying bodies were tainting the drinking water. Someone had an idea to move the bones and newly deceased bodies about 20M underground the streets of Paris to an area which was once a quarry.

This is a gypsy band playing in the subway terminal. Pretty good group!

Waiting in line outside the Catacombes. Who knew this was such a popular destination? We are all awaiting in terrorizing anticipation...

Once inside the small entrance you walk down 90 steps to a huge complex of tunnels and caverns.


These caverns are stacked with neatly placed floor to ceiling skeletons, about 6 million of them. The halls are quite chilly and damp and have the name of the Parisian street above you. They ask visitors to not use camera flashes, we did the best we could with the low lighting.

There is only indirect lighting casting haunting shadows along the floors and bones. We took a few flashlights that the kids felt a little braver holding.

Even some of the old tombstones and cemetery markers are placed between the bones.
This skull had a bullet hole through it.

There was also a section that was used for mass. City folk could come down and pay a small fee and attend mass. You still had some sort of access if your loved one's bones were somewhere down here.

The ascent to the street above.


Outside the grocery store.

Grace at the flower shop!