When you find yourself with an avalanche of human bones in your basement, you know it’s time for change.
Which is what the city of Paris did when exactly that happened to neighbors of the Cimetière des Innocents in 1774. Looking for a place to store the bones from the overflowing inner-city cemetery, they came up with the idea to put them in the decommissioned stone quarries underneath the city.
After arrangements had been made, bones from the various cemeteries of Paris, Les Innocents included, were carted to a chute in the avenue René Coty (near Place Denfert-Rochereau) to be stored underground. The name Catacombes was borrowed from Ancient Rome, even though there were no graves and funerary monuments. At first, the bones were stacked along the tunnels over hundreds of meters. It was only after the first VIP visits at the beginning of the 19th century that the bones were somewhat organized. More cemeteries had to be closed as the city grew, and their bones were added to the ones already in residence.
Signs were added to indicate the cemetery of origin, and the gravediggers arranged skulls and bones in patterns that can still be seen today.
In 1809, the Catacombes became a museum that today is part of the Musée Carnavalet and gives visitors access to a small fraction of the tunnel network of Paris’ ancient stone quarries.
In one of the first sections of the visit, sculptures made by a quarryman in the late 18th century can be seen. They represent sites from Port-Mahon on the Spanish island of Minorca where he was said to have been a POW.
There used to be a long line of visitors starting out from the old entrance and winding back around the square behind the eastern lodge of the barriére d’Enfer (entry point of the General Farmers’ Tax Wall), but recently, it was closed in favor of a new entrance, and the ticket sale has shifted online, so now visitors can book their spot in advance and don’t need to queue any longer.
old entrance
new entrance
exit at 21 avenue René Coty
signage in the métro station Denfert-Rocherreau
N° 2: Catacombes entrance, n° 5: Catacombes exitLocation of the Catacombes entrances on a map of Paris
The Pantheon is located on the Sainte Geneviève mountain in the heart of the Latin Quarter. Built in the 18th century, it was originally meant to accommodate relics of Sainte Geneviéve, the patron saint of Paris, but since the French Revolution, it honors distinguished French citizens, as the inscription on the front says:
AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE To the great men, from a grateful nation
When the remains of a distinguished person are transferred to the Panthéon, they obtain a almost mythical status. Only very few panthéonisés have been directly buried there, such as Victor Hugo. The “grands hommes” are still in a large majority men, the first woman was the wife of a grand homme whose family only agreed to the transfer if his wife’s remains could accompany his. The first woman to accede to Pantheéon status on her own merits was Marie Curie. Only three more women have followed her since, two Résistantes, and more recently, Simone Veil.
How do you become a grand homme? Only the national assembly can propose new candidates for the Panthéon, the final decision is made by the president.
On November 30, 2002, Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, was transferred to the Panthéon.
There are a number of cupolas in the Paris skyline. In this new series, Cupolas of Paris, we will have a look at the most prominent ones and what is hidden below them:
The Dôme des Invalides – 7tharrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
The Panthéon – 5tharrondissement – built in the 18th century
The Sorbonne – 5tharrondissement – built in the 17th century
The Observatory – 14tharrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
The Val de Grâce – 5tharrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
The Institut de France – 6tharrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
1 Invalides – 2 Panthéon – 3 Sorbonne – 4 Observatory – 5 Val de Grâce – 6 Institut de France
In the English-speaking world, the French national holiday on July14 is called Bastille Day. There’s the Place de la Bastille in Paris, too, but what exactly is or was the Bastille?
At first, the Bastille was a small two-towered châtelet built in the 14th century at the eastern city gate Porte Sainte Antoine, as part of the Charles V city wall. Later, King Charles V decided to enlarge it to an urban fortress by raising the two towers and adding six more. This fort was meant to defend the Porte Saint-Antoine and the eastern Paris city walls. It could also protect the king in the case of a popular revolt since it protected the road linking the king’s residence at the Hôtel Sant Pol to the château de Vincennes.
Château de Vincennes
Under later kings, the fortress served various purposes: Louis XI used it as prison, Francois 1er as a weapons depot, and Henri IV as a safe for the royal treasures. It was used more and more as a prison, especially during periods of unrest but it was Cardinal Richelieu who officially transformed it into a state prison. One of its famous inmates was the man in the iron mask (1698-1703). As prisons go, the Bastille was a more comfortable one, for people of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. They ate the same food as the governor, the prison cells had large rooms, they could bring a servant, correspond with people on the outside and receive visits. From the end of the 17th century on, the Bastille also included less comfortable premises for common prisoners. They lived off charity, were sometimes in chains, and slept on straw that was changed once a month. When a new prisoner arrived, a bell was rung. The neighboring shops closed and the guards covered their faces so as not to see the face of the new prisoner. Between 1661 and 1789, one out of six inmates was imprisoned for writing of some sort or other (printer, bookseller, peddler, or writer of satirical or defamatory books,). Given the number of prison cells, the Bastille could accommodate 45 prisoners at the most, but there were about 60 at one time under Louis XIV.
On July 14, 1789, the Bastille held only 7 prisoners whose incarceration conditions were quite loose. The people of Paris had taken the Invalides for weapons and cannons. They stormed the Bastille in search of powder and ammunition, and also freed the seven prisoners. The storming of the Bastille thus marked the beginning of the French Revolution and has become its symbol. Starting the very next day, the Bastille was knocked down by a private businessman who sold part of the Bastille stones as souvenirs (carved into the shape of the Bastille). One of them can be seen in the Musée Carnavalet, the museum of the city of Paris. The demolition lasted until 1806. Part of the material was used to build the Pont Louis XVI, now Pont de la Concorde, the bridge linking the Place de la Concorde to the Assemblée nationale (Lower House of Parliament).
Pont de la Concorde
Below Concorde Bridge – the stones from the Bastille
If you are looking for remains of the Bastille, there is one of the eight towers (the Tour de la Liberté, where the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned) in the nearby park square Henri-Galli.
remains of Bastille Tower at square Henri-Galli, Paris 4e
Part of the counterscarp wall can be found on the platform of the metro 5 in the station Bastille.
The Storming of the Bastille is commemorated on July 14 since 1880, day of the national holiday.
Today, in the place of the Bastille fortress, stands the July Column, commemorating the 1830 Revolution that saw the fall of King Charles X and the beginning of the Monarchie de Juillet, the July Monarchy. The marble base of the column contains a funerary gallery in which rest two large sarcophagi (13m x 2m) containing the remains of the martyrs of the 1830 Revolution and the 1848 Revolution. (Yes, France saw a lot of revolutions.) However, they are not alone! There are some Egyptian mummies in there, too. These mummies were brought back from Egypt 50 years earlier by scholars who had followed Napoleon during the Egyptian Campaign. They were deteriorating in a room of the National Library and were buried in the garden next to it, right where after the July 1830 revolts the bodies of the rioters were buried. That’s how the mummies got mixed up with the martyrs when they were exhumed in a hurry and ended up under the July Column with them.
Place de la Bastille with the July Column and the opera house in the background
