Last night we actually set the alarm! We needed to get up and out the door early to get in line for the Catacombs. They were worth the wait! It was like nothing I’ve seen before. Of course, how often do you come upon millions of bones that have been stacked neatly in an underground tunnel? Almost never.
So the catacombs came to be because Paris’s cemeteries we literally overflowing with corpses from centuries of use. One cemetery in particular had over 90,000 corpses buried in it. The buildings basement wall next to this cemetery literally collapsed due to the sheer weight of them all. So they started to move the bones to the old underground quarries on the outskirts of the city. They stacked the bones in a decorative fashion grouped by church. So all the parishioners of one church would be together with a marker defining their parish. That is the short version!
Here are the pictures

The black line on the ceiling was the path the tours in the early 1900’s took

A catacomb worker carved this. He carved several. They depict the many prisons he was in.

The strata layers exposed.

Ok next we went to the Arc de Triumph to watch the final stage of Le Tour de France. It was a carnival like atmosphere once the sponsor cars and floats stared coming in. It was spectacular seeing the peloton on the champs e’lyesee!

Tomorrow. The Louvre!