The Paris Catacombs are Deeply Misunderstood

Comments · 673

• KA

  @KazRowe · 4 months ago · pinned

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• PU

  @pugb2657 · 4 months ago

  When I visited the Catacombs, they had a display explaining how large amounts of the bones in the area I visited, were both those of young people and had radical amounts of damage from physical labor.<br>The display explained that this was most likely orphans that were used by the Church for construction projects, and some had been worked so hard at formative ages that their femurs (let alone smaller bones) were debilitatingly curved and misshapen. It really stuck with me, to know many bones were those of people that died young after terribly hard lives, and I&apos;m very grateful to the historians that made that information available!

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• EL

  @Eldervine · 4 months ago

  It&apos;s the sheer amount of bones for me. An unfathomable amount of dead people, their individual selves mixed together into a merged collective mass of &quot;humanity&quot;. I think for cultures that value individuality, it&apos;s a visual that&apos;s uncomfortable and alluring all at once.

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• MO

  @moonkoko00 · 3 months ago

  Hi, I&apos;m a Parisian, and I&apos;ve been exploring the catacombs for many years. I&apos;m deeply in love with this place, so I really enjoyed your video and the way it traces the history of the catacombs.<br>But there is one thing I&apos;d like to point out. The arrangement of the bones in the legal section is kind a tourist stunt. The bones were organized in this way when a small part of the catacombs was opened to the public. In the illegal sections, the ossuaries are very different, they&apos;re usually just huge piles of bones that you have to walk over, often grouped by type, such as vertebrae or arm bones.<br>The cataphile culture has also changed a lot over the years. Back in the mid-2000s, there were fewer people going underground, and the place was much cleaner. People generally respected the environment and didn&apos;t leave trash behind. There are also a few unwritten rules that you should know if you want to go down. Never rely on the names of the streets above you, as they no longer accurately correspond to the underground network. Never blindly follow arrows, and don&apos;t trust maps you find online. Also, we don&apos;t follow the black lines made by candle smoke, because there are none in the illegal part, or they have disapearred with time.<br>Cataphiles are very protective of the catacombs. Some people will deliberately try to confuse newcomers if they realize you&apos;re a &quot;tourist&quot;, someone visiting for the first time. I&apos;ve seen people use smoke flares to make inexperienced visitors get lost. I don&apos;t approve of this behaviour, but it&apos;s one reason why going down with experienced people is important.<br>Part of this protectiveness comes from the history of the place. For decades, there have been territorial conflicts underground, including clashes between left-wing and far-right groups. In the late 1990s, we largely succeeded in getting neo-Nazis out of the catacombs, but years later I still encountered rooms covered in swastikas. When that happens, cataphiles often take it upon themselves to remove the graffiti and protect the site.<br>Protecting the catacombs also means preserving their history. Many of us maintain the old street markings by retracing the letters with charcoal, just as previous generations did. At the same time, cataphiles continue to shape the living history of the place by creating artwork, opening new passages and galleries, and rediscovering forgotten rooms.<br>Something many people don&apos;t realize is that most of the catacombs do not contain bones at all. The vast majority of the network consists of old quarries. Because of that, the legal section visited by tourists doesn&apos;t really represent what the Catacombs of Paris are for most of us.<br>To me, the catacombs are not a museum. They&apos;re one of the few places where young people can still gather freely in a world where everything has become ridiculously expensive. They&apos;re a place where counterculture survives, where communities form, and where people maintain a genuine respect for the history of the underground.

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• MF

  @mfuentes4961 · 4 months ago

  As Above So Below is such an underrated gem! It’s a clever and original interpretation of Dante’s Inferno and it sucks that it was originally blown off as another found footage horror film.

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• CA

  @cayreet5992 · 4 months ago

  &quot;Remember you will die&quot; can be seen two ways: as a threat to your life and as a reminder to live before you die. I think I choose to see it the second way. One day I will die (as we all will), but on every day before that I choose to live.

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• AN

  @anundead · 4 months ago

  When I was there, I could not stop thinking about the fact that every single one of those bones belonged to somebody, with dreams, hopes, struggles, and a life worth living 💀 so I could never understand how someone is capable of desrespect, by even touching the bones.

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• CA

  @causticwit · 4 months ago

  You should definitely do an entire video just about the use of the catacombs during the war!

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• MI

  @missmarple2021 · 4 months ago

  I have a French friend who went to university in Paris. He said him and friends would go down to the catacombs, and one time he did get lost for a few hours!!! It sounds so claustrophobic!!

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• SA

  @saraoz2629 · 4 months ago (edited)

  I know people who go there, the illegal network of catacombs. they go explore and clean up after less respectful people, wash the walls, pick up the trash. they say Philibert’s body had something like a twisted ankle. They say alcohol was a rare commodity for the common people back then, and that he went down there to get drunk on the monks’ wine. They say he got so drunk down there that he couldn’t find his way anymore, and didn’t stand back up when he fell. They say it’s become a bit of an initiation when you go down there to find Philibert’s tomb, and drink in front of it, as a sort of homage : somehow, people have managed to bring 3 chairs down there and set them in a row facing the tomb.

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• PA

  @palthea6468 · 4 months ago

  In 2014 i was in Paris for a week . it was a school trip and we voted on what we wanted to do there months in advance. i am still upset that not a single person besides me wanted to visit the catacombs and i wasn&apos;t allowed to go on &nbsp;tour by myself

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• RE

  @rebekahj9015 · 4 months ago

  When I visited the catacombs, some other visitors, including some of my classmates, were making jokes, running around, screaming, etc. I didn&apos;t (and still don&apos;t) understand how they could do that. I felt similar to how I did when we visited cathedrals, a sense of smallness and reverence. I was crying most of the time I was in the catacombs. I can&apos;t understand the disrespect for the dead and what they&apos;ve gone through, or the disrespect for the artists who carefully placed their remains.

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