Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. As we get ready to set off
Speaker 1: on our trip to Barcelona, and we also come up
Speaker 1: on Halloween, we are bringing out a previous episode that
Speaker 1: combines the macabre with another trip that we took to Europe.
Speaker 1: It is the Paris Catacombs, which followed our twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: trip to France. This originally came out on October twenty third,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 1: Back when we were planning our trip to Paris earlier
Speaker 1: this year, one of the things that we specifically asked
Speaker 1: to include on the itinerary was a trip to the Catacombs.
Speaker 1: Those are in the southern part of the city. They're
Speaker 1: on the left bank of the Seine, and the Catacombs
Speaker 1: are an ossuary that cans the bones of an estimated
Speaker 1: six to seven million people. They are stacked in their
Speaker 1: floor to ceiling. Of course, that was an ideal topic
Speaker 1: for an October episode, but that ostuary is just one
Speaker 1: part of a huge network of tunnels and mines that
Speaker 1: are under the city. Their history goes back centuries before
Speaker 1: the bones were even part of it. And really this
Speaker 1: is two interconnected stories of minds and human remains. Because
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century Paris was dealing with two really
Speaker 1: big problems simultaneously. It had way too many dead bodies
Speaker 1: to deal with and a lot of the city was
Speaker 1: at great risk of collapsing into those mines. I mean,
Speaker 1: who hasn't had those two problems happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: You know, when we were on our catacomb's tour, the
Speaker 1: collapsing of the city was one hundred percent news to me,
Speaker 1: and I was like, that is as to meet dramatic
Speaker 1: as these bones are surrounded by. Yeah, and the city
Speaker 1: of Paris has a distinctive look. I love it so deeply.
Speaker 1: Many of its historic buildings are made from limestone, including
Speaker 1: famous landmarks like the Louver and notcl Dame Cathedral. Limestone
Speaker 1: is a rock made from marine sediments and it's abundant
Speaker 1: in the region thanks to the warm sea that covered
Speaker 1: the area roughly forty five million years ago, and it
Speaker 1: gives these buildings a consistent, creamy facade, often under a
Speaker 1: gray zinc roof. Yeah, when you look at like wide
Speaker 1: sweeping shots of Paris in movies if you've never personally
Speaker 1: been there, that's what's behind that just sort of dreamy,
Speaker 1: consistently colored look. Yeah, we should point out that that's
Speaker 1: in part also because the city has had a lot
Speaker 1: of regulation in place about what can be built and
Speaker 1: how it can be built, and that things need to
Speaker 1: look like they belong together, right right. This is especially
Speaker 1: like in the central historic part of the city. If
Speaker 1: you get out into the suburbs, it doesn't so much
Speaker 1: look like that anymore. Some of this limestone came from
Speaker 1: other parts of France, but a lot of it came
Speaker 1: from under the city of Paris itself. This type of
Speaker 1: limestone is so closely associated with the city that it's
Speaker 1: often called Paris stone, but its more formal name is
Speaker 1: Lutitian limestone. Geologists in the nineteenth century named it after Lutitia,
Speaker 1: which was the Roman name for the city that we
Speaker 1: now know as Paris. People were quarrying limestone, gypsum, and
Speaker 1: other materials in what's now Paris all the way back
Speaker 1: to antiquity. When this started around the first century, the
Speaker 1: city was much smaller, mostly occupying the area just to
Speaker 1: the south of the Seine and the islands in the
Speaker 1: river itself. The earliest quarries were open pits to the
Speaker 1: south of the city proper, but by the fourteenth century
Speaker 1: people were mining limestone underground rather than using these open quarries,
Speaker 1: and as the mines and the city both got bigger,
Speaker 1: they eventually overlapped. Mines were primarily under what's now the
Speaker 1: thirteenth and fourteenth Arrondiusment, but they also extended under a
Speaker 1: lot of other parts of the city as well. Although
Speaker 1: abandoned galleries within the mines were supposed to be filled
Speaker 1: in in a lot of cases, this didn't always happen.
Speaker 1: When it did happen, naturally, the fill material that was
Speaker 1: used was never as strong or as stable as the
Speaker 1: limestone that had been taken out. Basically, people were digging
Speaker 1: limestone out from under Paris, bringing it above ground, and
Speaker 1: making buildings out of it without necessarily reinforcing or bracing
Speaker 1: the space they left behind. This sounds sort of like
Speaker 1: the start of a sci fi movie on how to
Speaker 1: do it wrong. Unsurprisingly, this led to some problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Even under the best possible circumstances, it would be challenging
Speaker 1: to simultaneously keep up with centuries of expansion in both
Speaker 1: the city above and the mines below. This expansion, like
Speaker 1: I said, it just took place over hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: There was not a mass sister plan for the city
Speaker 1: of Paris that was maintained consistently for all of that time.
Speaker 1: And then when it came to what was happening underground,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time nobody was keeping track of
Speaker 1: the big picture with that at all. By the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: no one really had a sense of just how much
Speaker 1: stone had been removed from under Paris or exactly where
Speaker 1: the tunnels and galleries had been dug. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, in places the mines had been dug in layers,
Speaker 1: with one crew digging under a gallery that an earlier
Speaker 1: crew had previously hollowed out. So in the late eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: parts of Paris started collapsing into the mines underneath. This
Speaker 1: crisis really peaked between seventeen seventy four and seventeen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: and during that time as many as twenty people were killed.
Speaker 1: That might sound like a pretty low death toll compared
Speaker 1: to most of the disasters that we have talked about
Speaker 1: on this show, but these collapses were so unpredictable and
Speaker 1: frequent and dramatic that they were just terrifying. I don't
Speaker 1: know about anybody else, but the idea that my house
Speaker 1: might suddenly fall into a sink hole with that warning
Speaker 1: is way scarier to me than anything else we're talking
Speaker 1: about in the show. Today. People even blame these collapses
Speaker 1: on the work of the devil. That makes sense, right.
Speaker 1: The devil is below you, trying to shut your house down.
Speaker 1: The first major collapse took place on December seventeenth, seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy four, when a stretch of Rue d'anfair, the Street
Speaker 1: of Hell, collapsed into a mine. Roughly three hundred meters
Speaker 1: of road and adjacent buildings collapsed into a hole that
Speaker 1: was at least twenty five meters deep. Other collapses followed
Speaker 1: that one. On September fifteenth, seventeen seventy six, King Louis
Speaker 1: the sixteenth signed a decree closing the mines and prohibiting
Speaker 1: digging under public roads. People who owned private land that
Speaker 1: was situated over a mine were required to have that
Speaker 1: mine inspected and reinforced. The king also dispatched an architect
Speaker 1: named Antoine du Pont to inspect the damage. From this
Speaker 1: collapse and to try to map them the mine system
Speaker 1: as well as determine whether the private property owners were
Speaker 1: in compliance with this requirement. On April fourth of the
Speaker 1: following year, Louis the sixteenth issued another decree which established
Speaker 1: a Department of General Corey Inspection. Award winning Royal architect
Speaker 1: Charles Axel Guillammeau was appointed as its first inspector. General
Speaker 1: DuPaul stayed on as an engineer, although it's clear that
Speaker 1: he and Guiamau did not really get along terribly well.
Speaker 1: Gamo was given the task of mapping the minds and
Speaker 1: making them safe, and he had the skills that experienced
Speaker 1: to do this. At the same time, though this situation
Speaker 1: was dire, Another major collapse occurred near the city center
Speaker 1: on April twenty fourth, which was the day that he
Speaker 1: started work, and this project was also massive. There were
Speaker 1: about eight hundred hectares of mines under the city of Paris,
Speaker 1: that's about three square miles or eight square kilometers. Guillemau
Speaker 1: needed to map that entire system, including figuring out what
Speaker 1: public roads in buildings were situated on the land above
Speaker 1: and marking those landmarks with signs below. The King was
Speaker 1: not quite so worried about what was under private land.
Speaker 1: Gmo needed to reinforce and brace areas that were in
Speaker 1: danger of collapsing, and he developed a code for marking
Speaker 1: support columns that would note when the column was placed
Speaker 1: and who had done it. You can still see lots
Speaker 1: of those down there today. Gmo had hundreds of men
Speaker 1: working on this project, including laborers and cartographers, but there
Speaker 1: was really no way to do all of this work
Speaker 1: quickly enough to immediately prevent all future collapses. They kept
Speaker 1: happening regularly over the next few years. In seventeen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: a collapse in the neighborhood of Minimal killed seven people,
Speaker 1: and it took weeks to find all of their bodies.
Speaker 1: In addition to all of this mapping and stabilization work,
Speaker 1: Giammo also took on another task, preparing the old minds
Speaker 1: to receive human remains, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that after we first paused for a little sponsor break.
Speaker 1: As the city of Paris was dealing with all these
Speaker 1: collapsing roads and buildings, that was also dealing with another
Speaker 1: major problem, and that was an over abundance of dead bodies.
Speaker 1: As the city was expanding over what was essentially hollowed
Speaker 1: out limestone. It had also really outgrown its available burial space.
Speaker 1: In the centuries before the French Revolution, most people in
Speaker 1: Paris were buried in cemeteries that were adjacent to their
Speaker 1: parish churches. The city had thirty two such cemeteries, and
Speaker 1: in most cases people were buried in mass graves rather
Speaker 1: than individual plots. It was not unusual for these graves
Speaker 1: to be dug as trenches and then left open until
Speaker 1: they were full. It also was not unusual for the
Speaker 1: same piece of land to be reused as time passed,
Speaker 1: with a new mass grave being dug where an older
Speaker 1: group of bodies had decomposed. As the city got bigger
Speaker 1: and more crowded, though, this method of burial became less
Speaker 1: and less workable homes and other buildings encroached on the cemeteries.
Speaker 1: There were more bodies packed into the mass graves more tightly,
Speaker 1: with less time passing before the same piece of ground
Speaker 1: was needed to bury more people In an overcrowded graveyard,
Speaker 1: there just wasn't enough organic material and oxygen available for
Speaker 1: microorganisms to do the work required for decomposition, so there
Speaker 1: were too many bodies and it was taking longer for
Speaker 1: them to break down. Complicating all of this was the
Speaker 1: fact that some of these same churchyards were also used
Speaker 1: as communal green space, or they were next door to
Speaker 1: those types of spaces. So, for example, if a market
Speaker 1: was next door to or overlapping with a graveyard, that
Speaker 1: graveyard might be littered with blood and offal from butchered
Speaker 1: animals or rotting produce that had not been sold. Foul
Speaker 1: air and the smell of decay became persistent problems on
Speaker 1: top of the inherent grossness of that situation and the
Speaker 1: fact that decaying bodies really can spread disease. At this
Speaker 1: point in history, people blamed miasmas or bad air for
Speaker 1: a range of illnesses. There was a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about quote, cadaverous exhalations in these graveyards and the health
Speaker 1: problems that they were causing. By the seventeen sixties, officials
Speaker 1: in Paris were issuing reports detailing all kinds of problems
Speaker 1: that were associated with the cemeteries, including thick and foul
Speaker 1: smelling air and a range of mysterious illnesses. In seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty five, an ordinance was passed outlawing burials in church cemeteries,
Speaker 1: instead requiring new cemeteries to be built outside of the
Speaker 1: city itself, but this ordinance was never enforced. People understandably
Speaker 1: were upset by the idea that they could not be
Speaker 1: buried in the same place that their loved ones had been.
Speaker 1: In some cases, families had been buried in the same
Speaker 1: church cemetery for generations. The Catholic Church also objected to
Speaker 1: the plan because it meant that burials were going to
Speaker 1: become secularized. Even though people generally objected to the idea
Speaker 1: of moving the cemeteries outside the city, they continued to
Speaker 1: be concerned about their unhealthful effects in the city. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like a weird turnabout of the not
Speaker 1: in my backyard problem. In addition to blaming illnesses on
Speaker 1: bad cemetery air, people claimed that it was causing milk, meat,
Speaker 1: and other food to spoil within hours. People also reported
Speaker 1: wine turning into vinegar almost as soon as it was
Speaker 1: opened because of all this cemetery funk. It's not clear
Speaker 1: how much of this was real and how much was
Speaker 1: an urban legend, but it's clear that people were really
Speaker 1: fearful about whether these cemeteries were hurting them. In spite
Speaker 1: of that, though, nothing really changed until seventeen eighty, and
Speaker 1: that is when the situation at Cemthier de Saint Anossin,
Speaker 1: or the Cemetery of Holy Innocence, became completely unmanageable. This
Speaker 1: was the largest cemetery in Paris and also one of
Speaker 1: the oldest. Burials had started there in antiquity and its
Speaker 1: use as a cemetery was ongoing by the twelfth century.
Speaker 1: In eleven eighty six, King Philippe the second Auguste had
Speaker 1: a wall built around it as a mark of respect
Speaker 1: for the dead, but then also with the hope of
Speaker 1: discouraging people from using it as a public commons and
Speaker 1: market space. At first, the wall worked pretty well for
Speaker 1: this second purpose, but as the city grew, it was
Speaker 1: treated more and more like a common green space and
Speaker 1: the neighboring buildings got closer to it, some of them
Speaker 1: right up against that wall. Although it was technically owned
Speaker 1: by the adjacent Holy Innocence Church, this cemetery was operated
Speaker 1: more like a public cemetery. Residents of eighteen different parishes
Speaker 1: had burial rights there. Two hospitals and a morgue also
Speaker 1: sent their bodies to Holy Innocence. By the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: about ten percent of the people who died in Paris
Speaker 1: were being buried in that one place, and that was
Speaker 1: far more than the space could handle. In seventeen eighty,
Speaker 1: people started reporting extremely foul odors around the Cemetery of
Speaker 1: the Holy Innocence, and they started filing official complaints. Then,
Speaker 1: one night, a restaurant owner went into his cellar for
Speaker 1: some wine and described himself as being totally overcome by
Speaker 1: the smell. It turned out that the cemetery wall had collapsed,
Speaker 1: filling the cellars of several homes with human remains. Newly
Speaker 1: appointed Salubrity inspector Antoine Alexica de de Vaux investigated the
Speaker 1: situation and filed a report stating that at least three
Speaker 1: houses had been affected by poisonous gases seeping in from
Speaker 1: the cemetery. Residents were reporting all kinds of health effects,
Speaker 1: including delirium, respiratory issues, and vomiting. The inspector recommended that
Speaker 1: they not only seal off the basements and disinfect the homes,
Speaker 1: but also that the cemetery be closed entirely. Not long
Speaker 1: after Louis the sixteenth government issued an ordinance calling the
Speaker 1: Cemetery of Holy Innocence quote an intolerable and illegal threat
Speaker 1: to the city. The burials stopped there that year seventeen eighty,
Speaker 1: although the bodies that were already there stayed where they
Speaker 1: were for the time being. People just didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with them. In seventeen eighty two, though, someone
Speaker 1: writing under the name Villadieux published an essay proposing that
Speaker 1: the bodies be moved down into the mines that were
Speaker 1: under the city, which conveniently had just been undergoing this
Speaker 1: whole mapping and reinforcement process. This is where the mind
Speaker 1: story and the body story intersect, So before we get
Speaker 1: to that, we will take another quick sponsor break. About
Speaker 1: five years passed between the closing of the Cemetery of
Speaker 1: the Holy Innocence, meaning when people stopped burying new bodies there,
Speaker 1: and the removal of those bodies to the mines under
Speaker 1: the city of Paris. The process started in December of
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty five, with bodies being removed from the cemetery
Speaker 1: at night to try to avoid upsetting people and the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. On April seventh, seventeen eighty six, a portion
Speaker 1: of the mine system was consecrated as the Paris Municipal
Speaker 1: Osuary At some point in this process of body relocation,
Speaker 1: people started calling the area the Catacombs, after the Catacombs
Speaker 1: of Rome. A lot of folks refer to this whole
Speaker 1: system of minds as the Catacombs, even though the osuary
Speaker 1: is only one small part of it. Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: were there, it was an interesting thing, and that they
Speaker 1: talk about how huge it is, but what you walk
Speaker 1: through is really a fairly short little section of it.
Speaker 1: I think there's the perception, and I know I had
Speaker 1: it that you would just kind of be turned loose
Speaker 1: in this huge PLA. No, that is not the case.
Speaker 1: The process of removing the bodies from the Cemetery of
Speaker 1: the Holy Innocence took months, and it involved the remains
Speaker 1: of more than twenty thousand people. The cemetery had been
Speaker 1: so overcrowded that many of the bodies had supoontified, I
Speaker 1: means the fats in the body turned into a soapy
Speaker 1: substance rather than decomposing. Scientists Antoine Faercrois and Michel Turret
Speaker 1: studied these bodies and coined the term at apisser to
Speaker 1: describe what they were seeing. Once the bodies were all
Speaker 1: gone out of the cemetery of the Holy Innocence. The
Speaker 1: charle houses that were associated with the cemetery were torn down,
Speaker 1: the ground was disinfected with lime, and concrete was poured
Speaker 1: over the entire area. A fountain was installed in the
Speaker 1: middle of this, and today the former Cemetery of the
Speaker 1: Holy Innocence is the Fountain of Innocence, which is a
Speaker 1: public plaza. Soon people living near other cemeteries started petitioning
Speaker 1: for those bodies to be removed as well. One by one,
Speaker 1: the cemeteries within the city were closed and emptied. These
Speaker 1: remains weren't artfully arranged the way they are in the
Speaker 1: catacombs today. For the most part, the bodies were just
Speaker 1: put into it in piles. And then in the midst
Speaker 1: of all this exhumation and body relocating, the French Revolution
Speaker 1: started in seventeen eighty nine. Axel Guillemont was briefly imprisoned
Speaker 1: during the revolution, in part because his position had been
Speaker 1: a royal appointments, and in part because Antoine DuPont was
Speaker 1: campaigning against him. Like we said earlier, they did not
Speaker 1: seem to get along. I don't have all the detail
Speaker 1: about exactly what went on there. There seems to have
Speaker 1: been an ongoing power struggle, though all the church property
Speaker 1: was nationalized in the fall of seventeen eighty nine and
Speaker 1: including the cemeteries, but for the most part, this long
Speaker 1: term effort of cemetery closures and body removals was put
Speaker 1: on hold, especially as the French Revolution morphed into the
Speaker 1: Reign of Terror. However, this was also one of the
Speaker 1: few times when the recently dead were taken to the
Speaker 1: catacombs rather than bodies that had already been interred in
Speaker 1: a cemetery. A mass killing of prisoners was carried out
Speaker 1: between September two and sixth the seventeen ninety two out
Speaker 1: of fears that they might band together into counter revolutionary uprising.
Speaker 1: More than one thousand prisoners were killed in what came
Speaker 1: to be known as September massacres. Although some were buried
Speaker 1: in cemeteries, most were placed in the catacombs, and the
Speaker 1: ones that were buried in cemeteries were moved to the
Speaker 1: catacombs when those cemeteries were emptied. Later. Napoleon came to
Speaker 1: power in France in seventeen ninety nine, and the cemeteries
Speaker 1: of Paris became part of the question of how the
Speaker 1: French in general and Parisians specifically imagined theirselves in their
Speaker 1: new society post revolution, there were still a lot of
Speaker 1: public health concerns that surrounded the cemeteries that had been
Speaker 1: there before the revolution, and then on top of that,
Speaker 1: the violence and the recent horror of the Reign of
Speaker 1: Terror made the subject of these overcrowded burial spaces and
Speaker 1: the bodies in them a particularly sensitive one. People proposed
Speaker 1: sweeping reforms in multiple areas of society, including what the
Speaker 1: city should look like and how bodies should be treated
Speaker 1: after death. People started to imagine public cemeteries as places
Speaker 1: that could be beautiful while also inspiring a sense of
Speaker 1: morality and community ties. So during these years, a lot
Speaker 1: of things happened that were connected to this idea of
Speaker 1: how to make spaces for the dead, and what those
Speaker 1: spaces should mean to the living, and how all of
Speaker 1: that connected to the greater idea of French society. Before
Speaker 1: the revolution ended, the Church of Sant Genevieve had been
Speaker 1: reimagined as the Pantheon, which was to house bodies of
Speaker 1: some of France's most notable citizens, including Voltaire, Victor Hugo,
Speaker 1: emil Zola, Alexandre dumat Pierre, and Marie Currie. There had
Speaker 1: been a few burials in what is now Perlichez Cemetery
Speaker 1: before this point, but the cemetery as it exists today
Speaker 1: was opened in eighteen oh four. It was designed by
Speaker 1: architect Alexandre Teo d'Or Brognere an urban planner Nicholas Rocheaut.
Speaker 1: It was France's first garden cemetery, which was a cemetery
Speaker 1: style that became popular in North America and parts of
Speaker 1: Europe in the nineteenth century. Garden cemeteries were also called
Speaker 1: rural cemeteries, and they were meant to provide a sanitary
Speaker 1: way to bury the dead, but also to serve as
Speaker 1: a public park land and to reinforce romantic ideals that
Speaker 1: were connected to nature and hygiene. The bodies of a
Speaker 1: number of notable people were moved to Perliches, including abbal
Speaker 1: Ard and Heloise, and today it's one of the city's
Speaker 1: most popular tourist attractions. I went there on our trip
Speaker 1: to Paris, and it is beautiful and it does all
Speaker 1: the things that those types of cemeteries were supposed to inspire,
Speaker 1: which is like walking through nature and contemplating mortality in
Speaker 1: a peaceful, serene environment. Other similar cemeteries followed, both in
Speaker 1: France and elsewhere underground, though the bodies that had been
Speaker 1: placed in the catacombs were mostly left unattended from the
Speaker 1: start of the French Revolution through the early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: By then, in spite of the earlier work that Gumo
Speaker 1: had done, the catacombs were once again unsafe. Collapses and
Speaker 1: sinkholes continued, although on a smaller scale than they had
Speaker 1: at the end of the eighteenth century. Plus part of
Speaker 1: the system was now full of remains in various states
Speaker 1: of decay. The mines stayed cool year round, but they're
Speaker 1: also very damp, so the remains had been affected by
Speaker 1: moisture and rot. But in March of eighteen oh nine,
Speaker 1: Luis Etien Rica de Tuy was appointed to the Underground
Speaker 1: Department of Mines and Quarries, and he undertook a project
Speaker 1: to turn what had basically just been an underground body
Speaker 1: dump into a monument that was suitable for public admission.
Speaker 1: This is when the bones were arranged in the way
Speaker 1: that they are today, with the long bones and the
Speaker 1: skulls backed up florida ceiling where you can see them,
Speaker 1: and smaller bones and bone pieces tucked away behind. There
Speaker 1: are some spots if you go down there, where you
Speaker 1: can get a peek at the smaller bones and these
Speaker 1: fragments as well. There are placards around that note in
Speaker 1: a general way which cemetery the bones came from and
Speaker 1: when they were placed in the catacombs. The catacombs open
Speaker 1: to the public just four months after Eric al Detur
Speaker 1: took on this project. Visitors pass under a carving that
Speaker 1: reads arete say e see lampert de la more or
Speaker 1: stop this is the Empire of death. There are also
Speaker 1: placards carved with quotations about death, which ric Cardo Turri
Speaker 1: decided to add in eighteen ten. Other than that, the
Speaker 1: decorations are really minimal. Little has changed about the catacombs
Speaker 1: themselves since the early nineteenth century, and the last deposit
Speaker 1: of bones happened in eighteen sixty. The biggest edition since
Speaker 1: then is the electric lighting, which it now has. Even
Speaker 1: though this osuary was created because people were afraid of
Speaker 1: the negative effects that dead bodies were having in their neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: the catacombs with the bodies in them quickly became a
Speaker 1: tourist attraction. Ere Car de Touri placed a guestbook at
Speaker 1: the exit. In between July of eighteen oh nine and
Speaker 1: August of eighteen thirteen, visitors left their impressions of the
Speaker 1: catacombs in it as they left. General reactions in this
Speaker 1: guest book were all over the place, although a lot
Speaker 1: of people may notes along the lines of here one
Speaker 1: can learn how to live, or some variation of Memento
Speaker 1: mauri or remember you will die, which is also the
Speaker 1: name of a gift shop in Magic Kingdom. It is yes,
Speaker 1: I love it. Guests also observed how the placement of
Speaker 1: the anonymous, indistinguishable bones illustrated that all people are equal
Speaker 1: in death. This was particularly true since the cemeteries that
Speaker 1: had been emptied included the bodies of famous and influential people,
Speaker 1: including Maximilian Robespierre. Throughout their existence, the mines under Paris
Speaker 1: have been used for a range of purposes that really
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with getting limestone or dealing with
Speaker 1: excess bodies. Researchers started working in the catacombs of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, studying everything from the anatomy and pathology of
Speaker 1: the bones to whether anything could or did live down there.
Speaker 1: Photographer Gaspar Felix Tornachal, known as Felix Nadar studied the
Speaker 1: use of artificial light in photography down there. He patented
Speaker 1: the light source that he used to photograph the catacombs
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one. People also hid in them during
Speaker 1: the Revolution and the World Wars and other times of strife,
Speaker 1: and the minds, of course have been put to all
Speaker 1: kinds of criminal use, including being used by smugglers and
Speaker 1: people just hiding out from the law. Even though so
Speaker 1: much work was done to map and stabilize the mines,
Speaker 1: they are still prone to collapse in flooding and it
Speaker 1: is easy to get lost. For these reasons, entry into
Speaker 1: them was outlawed on November two of nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: Visitors to the catacombs are allowed to walk only through
Speaker 1: a designated section. As we mentioned before, it's brief, which
Speaker 1: is fenced off from the rest of the mines and
Speaker 1: parts of the austuary that are off limits to visitors.
Speaker 1: It is basically a one way tour. You go down
Speaker 1: the steps to get in there, you walk in a
Speaker 1: linear fashion through it and then go out, and there
Speaker 1: is just a massive system beyond that that people are
Speaker 1: not allowed into. Even so, today there is a whole
Speaker 1: subculture of catacomb officionados who are known as cataphiles, who
Speaker 1: have their own slang and their own rules of behavior
Speaker 1: and etiquette. They've used some of this space, the space
Speaker 1: that folks are not supposed to access to create artwork,
Speaker 1: including graffiti and carving's. Cataphiles access the minds through little
Speaker 1: known entrances, through things like sewers and sellers and other openings.
Speaker 1: There's a whole police department that is tasked with trying
Speaker 1: to find those and close them off because it can
Speaker 1: be very dangerous down there. As I was researching this,
Speaker 1: I found a news story about a couple of teenagers
Speaker 1: who were lost down there for days, and that was
Speaker 1: just within the last couple of years. There is apparently
Speaker 1: a lot of people who hang out down there all
Speaker 1: the time, fortunately with no injuries or deaths involved, but
Speaker 1: they are still still a dangerous place to go, especially
Speaker 1: without knowing your way around or how to deal with
Speaker 1: stuff down there. Yeah. I mean even you know, as
Speaker 1: you're walking through the area that you are allowed into,
Speaker 1: you can see they are fenced off, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: but you can see down some of those other areas
Speaker 1: and it goes to pitch blackness in a hurry, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine being lost down there, particularly if you have
Speaker 1: maybe lost power on your phone or something. I would
Speaker 1: be terrified, not because I am afraid of the bones,
Speaker 1: but just because I am trapped in a place where
Speaker 1: I can't see and no one knows where I am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have no cell phone signal. There's really no
Speaker 1: way to get a signal down there. You can find
Speaker 1: on the internet and they will be in the show
Speaker 1: notes various like magazine features by folks who have gained
Speaker 1: the trust of some cataphiles to be able to be
Speaker 1: guided down there, and several of them have harrowing moments
Speaker 1: where they're like, I have to crawl through this little
Speaker 1: tunnel that I can barely fit through. Rubble is raining
Speaker 1: down on me, and I can tell that the metro
Speaker 1: is directly above my head. What if something happens like
Speaker 1: there's no nope, nopelope. Anytime you're crawling through a tunnel
Speaker 1: you barely fit through, I'm out. I'm yeah. Well, it
Speaker 1: reminds me in a lot of ways of caving. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people go caving, yeah, like an
Speaker 1: adventure sport, and that can also be very dangerous. I
Speaker 1: don't understand why you would choose that over having a
Speaker 1: delicious meal. I just don't understand. I know it's very
Speaker 1: thrilling for some people. I have a friend who's an
Speaker 1: adrenaline junkie. I never understand why she wants to do
Speaker 1: the thing she does. She must think I'm the dullest
Speaker 1: human on the planet. I'm like, yes, but bacon, there's
Speaker 1: happiness to be gained in other places. Yeah, but the catacombs,
Speaker 1: I mean, it goes without saying it is a huge
Speaker 1: tourist attraction, but I really do highly recommend visiting if
Speaker 1: you're in Paris. The thing that struck me when we
Speaker 1: were there this time, I'm a little older and theoretically wiser,
Speaker 1: and it really was more than anything. It made me
Speaker 1: think about the equalizing nature of death in a way
Speaker 1: that was very reassuring and not upsetting at all. It
Speaker 1: was really really lovely, and I'm grateful that I had
Speaker 1: the chance to return. Yeah, especially in the post French Revolution,
Speaker 1: with the you know, the the ideals of the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: especially at the beginning, being about equality and fraternity. That
Speaker 1: like that that presentation of the bones is being this
Speaker 1: sort of universal equalizing I think was intentional. I was
Speaker 1: more struck by just how many there are, because Paris
Speaker 1: as a city has been you know, a large depending
Speaker 1: on how you know large in quotation marks, depending on
Speaker 1: what period of time, But it has been inhabited as
Speaker 1: a city for so long, and what do you do
Speaker 1: with the remains of your dead when you run out
Speaker 1: of room? And so like my fascination with it, I
Speaker 1: think was like a lot more with just the more
Speaker 1: pragmatic idea of like, oh, what do we do with
Speaker 1: all of our bodies? Right? Thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
Speaker 1: the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Speaker 1: Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show,
Speaker 1: that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us
Speaker 1: all over social media at missed in History, and you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.