WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Paris Catacombs 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.080 Happy Saturday, everybody. As we get ready to set off 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:09.000 on our trip to Barcelona, and we also come up 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:11.879 on Halloween, we are bringing out a previous episode that 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:15.440 combines the macabre with another trip that we took to Europe. 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:18.880 It is the Paris Catacombs, which followed our twenty nineteen 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.880 trip to France. This originally came out on October twenty third, 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:29.520 twenty nineteen, So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:40.120 History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.760 the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:46.239 Back when we were planning our trip to Paris earlier 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:48.960 this year, one of the things that we specifically asked 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:53.040 to include on the itinerary was a trip to the Catacombs. 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:55.880 Those are in the southern part of the city. They're 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.480 on the left bank of the Seine, and the Catacombs 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:02.440 are an ossuary that cans the bones of an estimated 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:05.880 six to seven million people. They are stacked in their 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:09.080 floor to ceiling. Of course, that was an ideal topic 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:13.440 for an October episode, but that ostuary is just one 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.959 part of a huge network of tunnels and mines that 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:20.679 are under the city. Their history goes back centuries before 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:23.440 the bones were even part of it. And really this 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:27.399 is two interconnected stories of minds and human remains. Because 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.080 in the eighteenth century Paris was dealing with two really 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:34.479 big problems simultaneously. It had way too many dead bodies 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.319 to deal with and a lot of the city was 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:41.920 at great risk of collapsing into those mines. I mean, 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:46.600 who hasn't had those two problems happening at the same time. 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.480 You know, when we were on our catacomb's tour, the 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.200 collapsing of the city was one hundred percent news to me, 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.120 and I was like, that is as to meet dramatic 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:02.720 as these bones are surrounded by. Yeah, and the city 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:05.760 of Paris has a distinctive look. I love it so deeply. 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.480 Many of its historic buildings are made from limestone, including 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:14.400 famous landmarks like the Louver and notcl Dame Cathedral. Limestone 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.280 is a rock made from marine sediments and it's abundant 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:19.519 in the region thanks to the warm sea that covered 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:22.720 the area roughly forty five million years ago, and it 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:26.600 gives these buildings a consistent, creamy facade, often under a 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.840 gray zinc roof. Yeah, when you look at like wide 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.959 sweeping shots of Paris in movies if you've never personally 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:38.040 been there, that's what's behind that just sort of dreamy, 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:42.320 consistently colored look. Yeah, we should point out that that's 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.160 in part also because the city has had a lot 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:47.760 of regulation in place about what can be built and 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.120 how it can be built, and that things need to 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.399 look like they belong together, right right. This is especially 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.640 like in the central historic part of the city. If 0:02:57.680 --> 0:02:59.560 you get out into the suburbs, it doesn't so much 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:03.359 look like that anymore. Some of this limestone came from 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:05.799 other parts of France, but a lot of it came 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.680 from under the city of Paris itself. This type of 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.239 limestone is so closely associated with the city that it's 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.720 often called Paris stone, but its more formal name is 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:22.079 Lutitian limestone. Geologists in the nineteenth century named it after Lutitia, 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:24.720 which was the Roman name for the city that we 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.560 now know as Paris. People were quarrying limestone, gypsum, and 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:31.320 other materials in what's now Paris all the way back 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:35.000 to antiquity. When this started around the first century, the 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:38.840 city was much smaller, mostly occupying the area just to 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:40.960 the south of the Seine and the islands in the 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:44.720 river itself. The earliest quarries were open pits to the 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.400 south of the city proper, but by the fourteenth century 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:53.000 people were mining limestone underground rather than using these open quarries, 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.200 and as the mines and the city both got bigger, 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:01.400 they eventually overlapped. Mines were primarily under what's now the 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:05.840 thirteenth and fourteenth Arrondiusment, but they also extended under a 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:08.640 lot of other parts of the city as well. Although 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.040 abandoned galleries within the mines were supposed to be filled 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:14.200 in in a lot of cases, this didn't always happen. 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:17.839 When it did happen, naturally, the fill material that was 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.720 used was never as strong or as stable as the 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.320 limestone that had been taken out. Basically, people were digging 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:27.880 limestone out from under Paris, bringing it above ground, and 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:32.080 making buildings out of it without necessarily reinforcing or bracing 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.440 the space they left behind. This sounds sort of like 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.200 the start of a sci fi movie on how to 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:43.480 do it wrong. Unsurprisingly, this led to some problems. Yeah, 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:47.479 Even under the best possible circumstances, it would be challenging 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:51.839 to simultaneously keep up with centuries of expansion in both 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:56.200 the city above and the mines below. This expansion, like 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.920 I said, it just took place over hundreds of years. 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:01.400 There was not a mass sister plan for the city 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.839 of Paris that was maintained consistently for all of that time. 0:05:05.360 --> 0:05:07.560 And then when it came to what was happening underground, 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.039 a lot of the time nobody was keeping track of 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:13.320 the big picture with that at all. By the seventeen hundreds, 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.080 no one really had a sense of just how much 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:19.640 stone had been removed from under Paris or exactly where 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.920 the tunnels and galleries had been dug. And on top 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.560 of that, in places the mines had been dug in layers, 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.440 with one crew digging under a gallery that an earlier 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:32.760 crew had previously hollowed out. So in the late eighteenth century, 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:37.400 parts of Paris started collapsing into the mines underneath. This 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:41.560 crisis really peaked between seventeen seventy four and seventeen seventy eight, 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:44.240 and during that time as many as twenty people were killed. 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.440 That might sound like a pretty low death toll compared 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.080 to most of the disasters that we have talked about 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.200 on this show, but these collapses were so unpredictable and 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.640 frequent and dramatic that they were just terrifying. I don't 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.359 know about anybody else, but the idea that my house 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:04.000 might suddenly fall into a sink hole with that warning 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.800 is way scarier to me than anything else we're talking 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.640 about in the show. Today. People even blame these collapses 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:13.920 on the work of the devil. That makes sense, right. 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:16.120 The devil is below you, trying to shut your house down. 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.600 The first major collapse took place on December seventeenth, seventeen 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.200 seventy four, when a stretch of Rue d'anfair, the Street 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:28.320 of Hell, collapsed into a mine. Roughly three hundred meters 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.599 of road and adjacent buildings collapsed into a hole that 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.479 was at least twenty five meters deep. Other collapses followed 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:39.119 that one. On September fifteenth, seventeen seventy six, King Louis 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.680 the sixteenth signed a decree closing the mines and prohibiting 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:46.760 digging under public roads. People who owned private land that 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:49.720 was situated over a mine were required to have that 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:54.680 mine inspected and reinforced. The king also dispatched an architect 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.440 named Antoine du Pont to inspect the damage. From this 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.960 collapse and to try to map them the mine system 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:04.600 as well as determine whether the private property owners were 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:07.800 in compliance with this requirement. On April fourth of the 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:12.120 following year, Louis the sixteenth issued another decree which established 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:16.760 a Department of General Corey Inspection. Award winning Royal architect 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:21.080 Charles Axel Guillammeau was appointed as its first inspector. General 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:24.320 DuPaul stayed on as an engineer, although it's clear that 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.720 he and Guiamau did not really get along terribly well. 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.160 Gamo was given the task of mapping the minds and 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.040 making them safe, and he had the skills that experienced 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:37.000 to do this. At the same time, though this situation 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:41.160 was dire, Another major collapse occurred near the city center 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:43.240 on April twenty fourth, which was the day that he 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:47.600 started work, and this project was also massive. There were 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.000 about eight hundred hectares of mines under the city of Paris, 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:55.360 that's about three square miles or eight square kilometers. Guillemau 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:59.040 needed to map that entire system, including figuring out what 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.680 public roads in buildings were situated on the land above 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.680 and marking those landmarks with signs below. The King was 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.360 not quite so worried about what was under private land. 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.240 Gmo needed to reinforce and brace areas that were in 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.559 danger of collapsing, and he developed a code for marking 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.600 support columns that would note when the column was placed 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.120 and who had done it. You can still see lots 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.800 of those down there today. Gmo had hundreds of men 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:30.200 working on this project, including laborers and cartographers, but there 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:32.800 was really no way to do all of this work 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:38.079 quickly enough to immediately prevent all future collapses. They kept 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:42.560 happening regularly over the next few years. In seventeen seventy eight, 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.400 a collapse in the neighborhood of Minimal killed seven people, 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.000 and it took weeks to find all of their bodies. 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.600 In addition to all of this mapping and stabilization work, 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:57.520 Giammo also took on another task, preparing the old minds 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.280 to receive human remains, and we're going to talk about 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.080 that after we first paused for a little sponsor break. 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.000 As the city of Paris was dealing with all these 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.400 collapsing roads and buildings, that was also dealing with another 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:22.040 major problem, and that was an over abundance of dead bodies. 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:25.800 As the city was expanding over what was essentially hollowed 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:30.400 out limestone. It had also really outgrown its available burial space. 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:34.360 In the centuries before the French Revolution, most people in 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.199 Paris were buried in cemeteries that were adjacent to their 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:41.240 parish churches. The city had thirty two such cemeteries, and 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:44.280 in most cases people were buried in mass graves rather 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:48.040 than individual plots. It was not unusual for these graves 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:50.720 to be dug as trenches and then left open until 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:53.680 they were full. It also was not unusual for the 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.880 same piece of land to be reused as time passed, 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.520 with a new mass grave being dug where an older 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.440 group of bodies had decomposed. As the city got bigger 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.559 and more crowded, though, this method of burial became less 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.920 and less workable homes and other buildings encroached on the cemeteries. 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.720 There were more bodies packed into the mass graves more tightly, 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.960 with less time passing before the same piece of ground 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:22.319 was needed to bury more people In an overcrowded graveyard, 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.920 there just wasn't enough organic material and oxygen available for 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.560 microorganisms to do the work required for decomposition, so there 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:31.960 were too many bodies and it was taking longer for 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:34.920 them to break down. Complicating all of this was the 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:38.360 fact that some of these same churchyards were also used 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.120 as communal green space, or they were next door to 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.120 those types of spaces. So, for example, if a market 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.480 was next door to or overlapping with a graveyard, that 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:50.800 graveyard might be littered with blood and offal from butchered 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:55.160 animals or rotting produce that had not been sold. Foul 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:59.559 air and the smell of decay became persistent problems on 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.920 top of the inherent grossness of that situation and the 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.880 fact that decaying bodies really can spread disease. At this 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:10.800 point in history, people blamed miasmas or bad air for 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:13.760 a range of illnesses. There was a lot of talk 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:18.360 about quote, cadaverous exhalations in these graveyards and the health 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:22.280 problems that they were causing. By the seventeen sixties, officials 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.120 in Paris were issuing reports detailing all kinds of problems 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.600 that were associated with the cemeteries, including thick and foul 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:34.240 smelling air and a range of mysterious illnesses. In seventeen 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:38.800 sixty five, an ordinance was passed outlawing burials in church cemeteries, 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:42.200 instead requiring new cemeteries to be built outside of the 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:47.520 city itself, but this ordinance was never enforced. People understandably 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:49.680 were upset by the idea that they could not be 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.280 buried in the same place that their loved ones had been. 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:55.440 In some cases, families had been buried in the same 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.880 church cemetery for generations. The Catholic Church also objected to 0:11:59.880 --> 0:12:02.280 the plan because it meant that burials were going to 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:07.160 become secularized. Even though people generally objected to the idea 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.680 of moving the cemeteries outside the city, they continued to 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.240 be concerned about their unhealthful effects in the city. It 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.040 was kind of like a weird turnabout of the not 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:21.760 in my backyard problem. In addition to blaming illnesses on 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:25.760 bad cemetery air, people claimed that it was causing milk, meat, 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:30.040 and other food to spoil within hours. People also reported 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.960 wine turning into vinegar almost as soon as it was 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:37.120 opened because of all this cemetery funk. It's not clear 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.079 how much of this was real and how much was 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:41.760 an urban legend, but it's clear that people were really 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:46.240 fearful about whether these cemeteries were hurting them. In spite 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:50.440 of that, though, nothing really changed until seventeen eighty, and 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.600 that is when the situation at Cemthier de Saint Anossin, 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:58.320 or the Cemetery of Holy Innocence, became completely unmanageable. This 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.199 was the largest cemetery in Paris and also one of 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.559 the oldest. Burials had started there in antiquity and its 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.680 use as a cemetery was ongoing by the twelfth century. 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.120 In eleven eighty six, King Philippe the second Auguste had 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:13.760 a wall built around it as a mark of respect 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:15.800 for the dead, but then also with the hope of 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:18.840 discouraging people from using it as a public commons and 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:22.280 market space. At first, the wall worked pretty well for 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.520 this second purpose, but as the city grew, it was 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.920 treated more and more like a common green space and 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.800 the neighboring buildings got closer to it, some of them 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.280 right up against that wall. Although it was technically owned 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:38.520 by the adjacent Holy Innocence Church, this cemetery was operated 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:43.040 more like a public cemetery. Residents of eighteen different parishes 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:47.120 had burial rights there. Two hospitals and a morgue also 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.560 sent their bodies to Holy Innocence. By the eighteenth century, 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.040 about ten percent of the people who died in Paris 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.880 were being buried in that one place, and that was 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.960 far more than the space could handle. In seventeen eighty, 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:03.440 people started reporting extremely foul odors around the Cemetery of 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:07.280 the Holy Innocence, and they started filing official complaints. Then, 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:09.840 one night, a restaurant owner went into his cellar for 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.800 some wine and described himself as being totally overcome by 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.960 the smell. It turned out that the cemetery wall had collapsed, 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:22.080 filling the cellars of several homes with human remains. Newly 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:27.160 appointed Salubrity inspector Antoine Alexica de de Vaux investigated the 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:30.160 situation and filed a report stating that at least three 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:34.320 houses had been affected by poisonous gases seeping in from 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:38.240 the cemetery. Residents were reporting all kinds of health effects, 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:43.400 including delirium, respiratory issues, and vomiting. The inspector recommended that 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:46.760 they not only seal off the basements and disinfect the homes, 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.320 but also that the cemetery be closed entirely. Not long 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:54.160 after Louis the sixteenth government issued an ordinance calling the 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:58.680 Cemetery of Holy Innocence quote an intolerable and illegal threat 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:02.960 to the city. The burials stopped there that year seventeen eighty, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.840 although the bodies that were already there stayed where they 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:08.560 were for the time being. People just didn't know what 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.520 to do with them. In seventeen eighty two, though, someone 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:15.160 writing under the name Villadieux published an essay proposing that 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.160 the bodies be moved down into the mines that were 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.960 under the city, which conveniently had just been undergoing this 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:25.400 whole mapping and reinforcement process. This is where the mind 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.240 story and the body story intersect, So before we get 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:40.520 to that, we will take another quick sponsor break. About 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:44.440 five years passed between the closing of the Cemetery of 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.840 the Holy Innocence, meaning when people stopped burying new bodies there, 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:50.920 and the removal of those bodies to the mines under 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:54.000 the city of Paris. The process started in December of 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:57.480 seventeen eighty five, with bodies being removed from the cemetery 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.520 at night to try to avoid upsetting people and the 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:04.720 Catholic Church. On April seventh, seventeen eighty six, a portion 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.239 of the mine system was consecrated as the Paris Municipal 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.920 Osuary At some point in this process of body relocation, 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:15.840 people started calling the area the Catacombs, after the Catacombs 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.480 of Rome. A lot of folks refer to this whole 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:22.119 system of minds as the Catacombs, even though the osuary 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:24.560 is only one small part of it. Yeah, when we 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.400 were there, it was an interesting thing, and that they 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:29.360 talk about how huge it is, but what you walk 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.360 through is really a fairly short little section of it. 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:36.480 I think there's the perception, and I know I had 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:38.800 it that you would just kind of be turned loose 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.120 in this huge PLA. No, that is not the case. 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.640 The process of removing the bodies from the Cemetery of 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.680 the Holy Innocence took months, and it involved the remains 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.440 of more than twenty thousand people. The cemetery had been 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:56.200 so overcrowded that many of the bodies had supoontified, I 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:58.640 means the fats in the body turned into a soapy 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:04.280 substance rather than decomposing. Scientists Antoine Faercrois and Michel Turret 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:07.960 studied these bodies and coined the term at apisser to 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.480 describe what they were seeing. Once the bodies were all 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:14.000 gone out of the cemetery of the Holy Innocence. The 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.280 charle houses that were associated with the cemetery were torn down, 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.919 the ground was disinfected with lime, and concrete was poured 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:26.080 over the entire area. A fountain was installed in the 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.800 middle of this, and today the former Cemetery of the 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.720 Holy Innocence is the Fountain of Innocence, which is a 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:36.640 public plaza. Soon people living near other cemeteries started petitioning 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:40.560 for those bodies to be removed as well. One by one, 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:44.480 the cemeteries within the city were closed and emptied. These 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.199 remains weren't artfully arranged the way they are in the 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:49.720 catacombs today. For the most part, the bodies were just 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:53.439 put into it in piles. And then in the midst 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:57.440 of all this exhumation and body relocating, the French Revolution 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:02.800 started in seventeen eighty nine. Axel Guillemont was briefly imprisoned 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.840 during the revolution, in part because his position had been 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:09.600 a royal appointments, and in part because Antoine DuPont was 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:12.720 campaigning against him. Like we said earlier, they did not 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.760 seem to get along. I don't have all the detail 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:17.760 about exactly what went on there. There seems to have 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.600 been an ongoing power struggle, though all the church property 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:24.560 was nationalized in the fall of seventeen eighty nine and 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:28.040 including the cemeteries, but for the most part, this long 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.560 term effort of cemetery closures and body removals was put 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:35.119 on hold, especially as the French Revolution morphed into the 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:38.240 Reign of Terror. However, this was also one of the 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.760 few times when the recently dead were taken to the 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.320 catacombs rather than bodies that had already been interred in 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:48.160 a cemetery. A mass killing of prisoners was carried out 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.960 between September two and sixth the seventeen ninety two out 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:56.040 of fears that they might band together into counter revolutionary uprising. 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:59.320 More than one thousand prisoners were killed in what came 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:03.040 to be known as September massacres. Although some were buried 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.800 in cemeteries, most were placed in the catacombs, and the 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.119 ones that were buried in cemeteries were moved to the 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:13.399 catacombs when those cemeteries were emptied. Later. Napoleon came to 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.880 power in France in seventeen ninety nine, and the cemeteries 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.480 of Paris became part of the question of how the 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:24.360 French in general and Parisians specifically imagined theirselves in their 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:27.919 new society post revolution, there were still a lot of 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.520 public health concerns that surrounded the cemeteries that had been 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:33.960 there before the revolution, and then on top of that, 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.680 the violence and the recent horror of the Reign of 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.000 Terror made the subject of these overcrowded burial spaces and 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:44.240 the bodies in them a particularly sensitive one. People proposed 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.959 sweeping reforms in multiple areas of society, including what the 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.840 city should look like and how bodies should be treated 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:56.280 after death. People started to imagine public cemeteries as places 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.199 that could be beautiful while also inspiring a sense of 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:03.400 morality and community ties. So during these years, a lot 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.520 of things happened that were connected to this idea of 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.360 how to make spaces for the dead, and what those 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:11.959 spaces should mean to the living, and how all of 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:16.240 that connected to the greater idea of French society. Before 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:19.760 the revolution ended, the Church of Sant Genevieve had been 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:23.359 reimagined as the Pantheon, which was to house bodies of 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:28.159 some of France's most notable citizens, including Voltaire, Victor Hugo, 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:32.880 emil Zola, Alexandre dumat Pierre, and Marie Currie. There had 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.000 been a few burials in what is now Perlichez Cemetery 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.680 before this point, but the cemetery as it exists today 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.119 was opened in eighteen oh four. It was designed by 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:48.040 architect Alexandre Teo d'Or Brognere an urban planner Nicholas Rocheaut. 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.960 It was France's first garden cemetery, which was a cemetery 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.919 style that became popular in North America and parts of 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:58.720 Europe in the nineteenth century. Garden cemeteries were also called 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.080 rural cemeteries, and they were meant to provide a sanitary 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.000 way to bury the dead, but also to serve as 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:08.480 a public park land and to reinforce romantic ideals that 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:12.280 were connected to nature and hygiene. The bodies of a 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:15.760 number of notable people were moved to Perliches, including abbal 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:18.040 Ard and Heloise, and today it's one of the city's 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:20.760 most popular tourist attractions. I went there on our trip 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:23.879 to Paris, and it is beautiful and it does all 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.480 the things that those types of cemeteries were supposed to inspire, 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:32.159 which is like walking through nature and contemplating mortality in 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:36.840 a peaceful, serene environment. Other similar cemeteries followed, both in 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:40.439 France and elsewhere underground, though the bodies that had been 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:43.520 placed in the catacombs were mostly left unattended from the 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.320 start of the French Revolution through the early eighteen hundreds. 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.640 By then, in spite of the earlier work that Gumo 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:55.119 had done, the catacombs were once again unsafe. Collapses and 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.640 sinkholes continued, although on a smaller scale than they had 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.560 at the end of the eighteenth century. Plus part of 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:04.600 the system was now full of remains in various states 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.560 of decay. The mines stayed cool year round, but they're 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:11.640 also very damp, so the remains had been affected by 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:15.800 moisture and rot. But in March of eighteen oh nine, 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:19.920 Luis Etien Rica de Tuy was appointed to the Underground 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:23.280 Department of Mines and Quarries, and he undertook a project 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:26.000 to turn what had basically just been an underground body 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:29.919 dump into a monument that was suitable for public admission. 0:22:30.640 --> 0:22:33.000 This is when the bones were arranged in the way 0:22:33.000 --> 0:22:36.000 that they are today, with the long bones and the 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:38.960 skulls backed up florida ceiling where you can see them, 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:42.840 and smaller bones and bone pieces tucked away behind. There 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:44.720 are some spots if you go down there, where you 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:46.640 can get a peek at the smaller bones and these 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:50.600 fragments as well. There are placards around that note in 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:53.879 a general way which cemetery the bones came from and 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:57.120 when they were placed in the catacombs. The catacombs open 0:22:57.200 --> 0:22:59.919 to the public just four months after Eric al Detur 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:03.879 took on this project. Visitors pass under a carving that 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:07.720 reads arete say e see lampert de la more or 0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:11.040 stop this is the Empire of death. There are also 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:14.680 placards carved with quotations about death, which ric Cardo Turri 0:23:15.080 --> 0:23:18.240 decided to add in eighteen ten. Other than that, the 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:22.399 decorations are really minimal. Little has changed about the catacombs 0:23:22.440 --> 0:23:26.040 themselves since the early nineteenth century, and the last deposit 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:30.280 of bones happened in eighteen sixty. The biggest edition since 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:33.720 then is the electric lighting, which it now has. Even 0:23:33.720 --> 0:23:37.119 though this osuary was created because people were afraid of 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:40.640 the negative effects that dead bodies were having in their neighborhoods, 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:43.320 the catacombs with the bodies in them quickly became a 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:47.480 tourist attraction. Ere Car de Touri placed a guestbook at 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:49.960 the exit. In between July of eighteen oh nine and 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:53.240 August of eighteen thirteen, visitors left their impressions of the 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.840