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The Catacombs of Paris
Loin d'être un musée morbide, les ossements des catacombes y sont savamment agencés pour composer un stupéfiant décor romantico-macabre. Et les nombreuses sentences qu'on découvre au hasard des galeries ne peuvent qu'inspirer des méditations sur l'au-delà. Ce guide des Catacombes détaille le parcours du visiteur dans l'ossuaire et donne les clés de l'histoire mouvementée des lieux. Lesquels ne cessent de fasciner, plus de deux cents ans après leur aménagement.
" Arrête ! C'est ici l'empire de la mort "
C'est par cet avertissement saisissant que le visiteur est accueilli au seuil des Catacombes, vaste labyrinthe d'anciennes carrières souterraines. Ce réseau de sombres corridors constitué à partir de la fin du xviiie siècle abrite aujourd'hui les restes de près de six millions de Parisiens – soit trois fois la population de capitale aujourd'hui...
Loin d'être un musée morbide, les ossements y sont savamment agencés pour composer un stupéfiant décor romantico-macabre. Et les nombreuses sentences qu'on découvre au hasard des galeries ne peuvent qu'inspirer des méditations sur l'au-delà.
Ce guide des Catacombes détaille le parcours du visiteur dans l'ossuaire et donne les clés de l'histoire mouvementée des lieux. Lesquels ne cessent de fasciner, plus de deux cents ans après leur aménagement.
" Arrête ! C'est ici l'empire de la mort "
C'est par cet avertissement saisissant que le visiteur est accueilli au seuil des Catacombes, vaste labyrinthe d'anciennes carrières souterraines. Ce réseau de sombres corridors constitué à partir de la fin du xviiie siècle abrite aujourd'hui les restes de près de six millions de Parisiens – soit trois fois la population de capitale aujourd'hui...
Loin d'être un musée morbide, les ossements y sont savamment agencés pour composer un stupéfiant décor romantico-macabre. Et les nombreuses sentences qu'on découvre au hasard des galeries ne peuvent qu'inspirer des méditations sur l'au-delà.
Ce guide des Catacombes détaille le parcours du visiteur dans l'ossuaire et donne les clés de l'histoire mouvementée des lieux. Lesquels ne cessent de fasciner, plus de deux cents ans après leur aménagement.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
96 pages, Paperback
First published July 13, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 11, 2022
i got this book on my visit to the catacombs, i did not listen to the pre-recorded audio guide they gave me, i wanted to enjoy the moment and wander without any disturbance down there. it was an extraordinary experience, one of the best i had in my life, being underground in a big city like paris, surrounded by death and poetry, so many untold stories. This book has very clear photographs of the main parts of the catacombs, explaining the history behind it and where it stands today, and also mentioning some of the engravings on the walls, it is better than any audioguide they can give you, but it is way better to have this read before visiting the catacombs and not after.
May 2, 2014
So, while we were in Paris, this being my third trip to Paris, the third time really was the charm and I finally got to visit the catacombs. Me being me, this should probably have been Stop #1 on Trip #1, but I’m not sure my dad would have been able to stand up straight in them.
After our utterly awesome and creepy foray through the catacombs, both the quarries and the ossuary, we went to the gift shop, where I proceeded to splurge on dumb stuff like a skull wine bottle stopper, but also bought a copy of the English-language version of The Catacombs of Paris by Gilles Thomas. I read the whole thing on the plane ride back home, as my Kindle decided to die an hour into the flight. (Thanks, Obama.)
This book might have been more useful to me when I was still within the catacombs, as my French is a bit iffy and the ossuary in particular is full of gloriously morbid, severe limestone plaques with quotes about death inscribed on them. The quotes represent all the best in Serious Death Talk that Western civilization has to offer, including quotes by Greek and Roman philosophers, French poets, and the Bible. (Everyone else, apparently, can go hang. But silently.)
Despite being about 120 pages long and slightly smaller than a DVD case (maybe the size of a Blu-Ray case? I am not sure, as I do not have Blu-Ray), this book is solid gold. It gives a pretty solid and up-to-date overview of the current visitor’s itinerary, walking you through everything you actually walk through but with much more information than is available on the wall plaques on the tour. (Another reason I think this books might have been better to have with me in the catacombs.) It also gives a ton of tantalizing glimpses into some of the other several hundred miles of catacombs beneath the city that the visitors cannot walk through, and an excellent brief history of the catacomb system as a whole. The first half of the book is mostly about the quarries, both in the past and present, as is the first half of the tour. The second half of the book, like the second half of the tour, is where things get grim, which is where we get into the ossuary.
The ossuary, despite being viscerally creepy because it is literally miles and miles and miles of stacked human bones, is not nearly as creepy as the stories behind why the ossuary was needed, and particularly the gruesome, stomach-churning accounts of the noxious public health hazard that was the Cimitière des Saints-Innocents, a cemetery that had been in use for 700 years and held the remains of over two million Parisians before turning into such an untenably disgusting pit of half-rotted medical waste that the city was forced to empty it and pave it over. The bones of those two million Parisians, plus an additional four million bones from the dozens of other cemeteries that had developed around Paris over the course of its two thousand year history, were all transferred to the empty caverns of the old limestone quarries that had once been safely outside of little baby Paris, and were now underneath it.
While this little book does not have the room to go into quite all the gory detail, it doesn’t pull any punches about what it does report, giving us photos of the ossuary, contemporary artwork of old Paris cemetaries, bone transfers to the ossuary, various important happenings in the ossuary’s history (it’s really weird for me to think that just the ossuary is nearly as old as the United States when it was created basically as a result of Paris getting too old to keep its whole past around), and a lot of awesome quotes from all kinds of historical primary sources. Most importantly, it has a “further recommended reading” list at the end, so morbid weirdos like me know where to get additional fixes of Weird History With Skeletons.
Overall it’s got quite a lot packed into for a short slick touristy kind of publication; I think my biggest criticism of it is that there are a few places where the English translation kind of falls down on the job—not enough to interfere with comprehension, but enough to make you break concentration and have to read the sentence a second time. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Catacombs, if you can get a copy (I don’t know if it’s sold outside the Comptoire), and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who actually goes through the Catacombs, both as a souvenir as an enhancement to the tour experience.
Originally posted at http://bloodygranuaile.livejournal.co....
After our utterly awesome and creepy foray through the catacombs, both the quarries and the ossuary, we went to the gift shop, where I proceeded to splurge on dumb stuff like a skull wine bottle stopper, but also bought a copy of the English-language version of The Catacombs of Paris by Gilles Thomas. I read the whole thing on the plane ride back home, as my Kindle decided to die an hour into the flight. (Thanks, Obama.)
This book might have been more useful to me when I was still within the catacombs, as my French is a bit iffy and the ossuary in particular is full of gloriously morbid, severe limestone plaques with quotes about death inscribed on them. The quotes represent all the best in Serious Death Talk that Western civilization has to offer, including quotes by Greek and Roman philosophers, French poets, and the Bible. (Everyone else, apparently, can go hang. But silently.)
Despite being about 120 pages long and slightly smaller than a DVD case (maybe the size of a Blu-Ray case? I am not sure, as I do not have Blu-Ray), this book is solid gold. It gives a pretty solid and up-to-date overview of the current visitor’s itinerary, walking you through everything you actually walk through but with much more information than is available on the wall plaques on the tour. (Another reason I think this books might have been better to have with me in the catacombs.) It also gives a ton of tantalizing glimpses into some of the other several hundred miles of catacombs beneath the city that the visitors cannot walk through, and an excellent brief history of the catacomb system as a whole. The first half of the book is mostly about the quarries, both in the past and present, as is the first half of the tour. The second half of the book, like the second half of the tour, is where things get grim, which is where we get into the ossuary.
The ossuary, despite being viscerally creepy because it is literally miles and miles and miles of stacked human bones, is not nearly as creepy as the stories behind why the ossuary was needed, and particularly the gruesome, stomach-churning accounts of the noxious public health hazard that was the Cimitière des Saints-Innocents, a cemetery that had been in use for 700 years and held the remains of over two million Parisians before turning into such an untenably disgusting pit of half-rotted medical waste that the city was forced to empty it and pave it over. The bones of those two million Parisians, plus an additional four million bones from the dozens of other cemeteries that had developed around Paris over the course of its two thousand year history, were all transferred to the empty caverns of the old limestone quarries that had once been safely outside of little baby Paris, and were now underneath it.
While this little book does not have the room to go into quite all the gory detail, it doesn’t pull any punches about what it does report, giving us photos of the ossuary, contemporary artwork of old Paris cemetaries, bone transfers to the ossuary, various important happenings in the ossuary’s history (it’s really weird for me to think that just the ossuary is nearly as old as the United States when it was created basically as a result of Paris getting too old to keep its whole past around), and a lot of awesome quotes from all kinds of historical primary sources. Most importantly, it has a “further recommended reading” list at the end, so morbid weirdos like me know where to get additional fixes of Weird History With Skeletons.
Overall it’s got quite a lot packed into for a short slick touristy kind of publication; I think my biggest criticism of it is that there are a few places where the English translation kind of falls down on the job—not enough to interfere with comprehension, but enough to make you break concentration and have to read the sentence a second time. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Catacombs, if you can get a copy (I don’t know if it’s sold outside the Comptoire), and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who actually goes through the Catacombs, both as a souvenir as an enhancement to the tour experience.
Originally posted at http://bloodygranuaile.livejournal.co....
June 18, 2021
If, like me, you're the kind of person who enjoys reading every single educational sign and placard at museums, parks, historical sites and the like, then you might just enjoy this book. I have not been to the Paris catacombs, but received the book as a gift from a friend who did. I wouldn't say that reading the book made me feel like I've been there, but it was a pretty good consolation prize. Excellent photography, and some very interesting details to read (I thought it COULD have used a bit more of the interesting historical context and stories, and a bit less of the extraneous details about which galleries and vaults have which kind of structural supports).
On another note, as a parent of a small child it's a convenient read because it's split into small sections that can be read easily between checking on the little one, such as when sitting on a bench watching playtime at the park. And the beautiful skull photo on the cover ensures that other parents won't try to engage with you in small talk.
On another note, as a parent of a small child it's a convenient read because it's split into small sections that can be read easily between checking on the little one, such as when sitting on a bench watching playtime at the park. And the beautiful skull photo on the cover ensures that other parents won't try to engage with you in small talk.
March 19, 2024
I picked up an English translation of the book at Powell’s bookstore and it was an interesting read. I am one of those people who reads all the notices, etc. in museums and the like, so it was right up my alley if a bit morbid. But of course, when you look at the numbers of people who have died over the ages on Earth you had to know that someone somewhere would have figured a way to make death a tourist attraction!
August 20, 2024
There are way too many names, dates and other numbers in this book that make it difficult to follow and relatively boring. I bought this in the catacombs of Paris and it is translated from French so it’s possible that it’s partially a translation issue. There were some interesting facts about the catacombs and it was cool to read the translations of the various scriptures in the catacombs. The pictures in the book are also stunning!
March 22, 2018
Great photography, but could have used more clarity and a fuller explanation in a few places.
October 17, 2018
A quick but very informative read! I wished there had been a little bit more about the prehistoric sediment, that they talked about in the meuseum, but it was interesting anyway.
January 11, 2019
I’m glad I finally read this history of the Catacombs.
September 9, 2022
It’s a very informational book. But all the information you learn in the audio tour as well, I wish there was more fun or lesser know facts
December 31, 2024
A good start and useful overview but I found myself wanting something a bit more in depth. Good news is, I can now go look for something more detailed if I want to.
August 12, 2025
Bones
July 15, 2012
I picked this up in the gift shop across from the exit to the catacombs after doing the walk through them earlier this year. I primarily bought it because there was no flash photography allowed down there, and it was so very dark that no camera was going to get any good pictures. This book is full of pictures of every part of the catacombs, including some that are not on the tour. In addition, there are several historical photos and illustrations showing how the place has changed over the years. Another feature I found useful was English translations of many of the plaques and monument engravings, since my French is very lousy.
All in all, a good companion to your visit, and probably a good thing to read before you go!
All in all, a good companion to your visit, and probably a good thing to read before you go!
October 10, 2016
Purchased this book after a tour of the Catacombs in Paris. It is a great souvenir, but also a great book even if you just want to learn about the Catacombs. The book gives a nice overview of the Catacombs, and have a lot of wonderful pictures of the Catacombs. My favorite part was that the book covers pictures of some areas of the Catacombs that tourists are no longer allowed to visit and there were illustrations of the Catacombs from the early days.
March 18, 2025
“How ghastly this supreme struggle must have been, in the crimson torchlight strangely lighting the tense faces of the combatants! Furious stamping feet, cries of anger and cries of pain, death rattles, the clicking of the bayonets, detonations; what a scene! All this took place in the long corridors of these bone-lined crypts, under the watchful eyes of the dead, troubled in the sleep that had been promised them!”
December 8, 2020
Excellent read as a piece of memorabilia but equally handy to the tourist doing some research on sites to see. Even if you have never been it is a wonderful guide with terrific photographs, timelines, maps and more. Fun facts about the evolution of the catacombs, their various uses during wartime, and their current state.
June 11, 2014
History of the catacombs. Not a scintillating read but a good supplement to a visit.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews