In
Paris, there is this place named The
Catacombs.
It lies far beneath the
city, far beneath the
metro line. It is
crazy. It is
scary. It is
insane. In it, there are the
bones of five to six million people. Starting from the late 18th century, lacking in space to put
corpses,
bodies of people who could not afford proper
burials were moved from the overflowing
charnel houses and just dumped there. The
bones are piled around in heaps that line the walls. Some of the bones are in gigantic stacks. Some bones are fashioned into macabre configurations: A cross made from
femurs, a real
jolly roger, a heart with an arrow through it.
And all the while, as I wandered through the horrible place, I kept wondering about these people's families.