Six Million Sets of Bones

Paris has an interesting mix of history: beautiful, bloody, and downright bizarre. And my next day in the city was a great mashup of all of the weird history behind the City of Light.

It started out with the typical tourist destination of Notre-Dame. Notre-Dame is a strange sort of tourist destination. It is clearly touristy, you can take pictures, but it's free and often there is a service of some sort going on.

I really like Notre-Dame. It is an excellent example of Gothic architecture, and the grounds surrounding it are beautiful. It's on the island part between where the Seine splits. The cool thing about Paris is the city is literally built around the river. Conversely, in London, the Thames seems to be in the way. Anyway, I got some great pictures inside and outside the cathedral.

It was right at the beginning of spring, so some of the trees and flowers were in bloom. The city was just gorgeous.

Then we decided to go to the crypt, which is underground, practically right beneath Notre-Dame.

I hadn't been here before, so I found it fascinating. It was much more of a museum, but I learned a lot about the past of Paris. It was interesting to see the entire archaeological history of the past 2,000 years of the city laid out.

After that was the catacombs. I was super-excited to go to the catacombs. I had wanted to go on my first trip to Paris, but there wasn't enough time.

It's really cool, but not for people who don't like bones because there are an estimated six million Parisian bones in the catacombs. Basically, in 1785, just four years before the Revolution, the catacombs were built. Previously, the Cemetery of the Innocents had been used for 10 centuries, but had become a source of constant infection and disease. Hence the need for the catacombs.

They were built and consecrated and then became a place to visit. Various famous French men and women visited the catacombs in its early days, including Napoleon III and his son.

Basically you walk down a spiral staircase nine meters and then walk through some dark tunnels before seeing stacks of bones. There were so many bones. It was really cool to see some plaques from the Revolution and knowing that the bones had been there for almost as long as America has been a country.

When I was in Paris, I read Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which is short vignettes about his time in Paris. It was really cool. I was sitting in the Luxembourg gardens and then I turned the page and literally read the part where Hemingway talked about walking through the Jardin du Luxembourg trying to find inspiration.

This had to be one of the weirdest mix of events in Paris. We saw a cathedral, an archaeological crypt, millions of sets of bones in the catacombs, and one of the largest public parks.