Empire of the Dead

Paris had a hygiene problem in the late 18th century.  In addition to your run of the mill sewage issues, the city's cemeteries were also overflowing, sometimes literally.  Because most people were being buried in mass graves without coffins, the bodies were decomposing directly into the ground and contaminating the well water, which was the same water many Parisians drank.  Gross.  The city's solution was exhuming the bodies and moving them underground into disused quarries, and now these catacombs are a morbid tourist attraction.  I can't say no to that, so Magge, Emily (a high school friend who has been living in Paris) and I checked it out this past weekend.

The skulls and bones are so meticulously placed in geometric patterns that it's easy to forget that you're walking underground with thousands of dead people.  However, ubiquitous plaques with both uplifting and grim quotations about death (example of the later, paraphrased: "whenever you see someone die, remember that one day you will die as well") help to remind you that you are indeed in the empire of the dead.

Entrance to the catacombs

More pictures in the full post.

A worker was trapped in the quarry and carved this replica of a place from Minorca from memory as he waited to die

A ghost.  Either that, or someone walked in front of my picture taken at a slow shutter speed.  I can't remember.