Napoleon and the Catacombs

Bonjour all! I'm sorry it has been so long (almost a month exactly!) since my last post, but what with traveling, final exams, and a general sense of overwhelmed-ness, I wasn't in the mood to write. But now that exams are over, I and I have two 5-day weekends in a row, I will now attempt to post 3 consecutive posts about what I have been up to this month. Apologies if that seems a little rabid, but I need to get it out of the way before my trip to ROME this weekend! (Yeah, that was a little unexpected. Kind of just bought tickets with some friends over lunch today. But I guess if you're going to impulse buy, it might as well be on travel to a Mediterranean country when your current city of residence is buried in snow). 

So, here it is: What I did right before winter break. 

All my friends had gone back home already, so on the day before I left on my trip I decided to check some things off my "To do in Paris list". First up was the Military Museum, also home to the tomb of Napoleon, and then after that the Catacombs, home to the bones of six million people whose graves were destroyed due to infection in the late 18th/early 19th century. Here is what I saw. 

The entrance to the museum 

The front of the building (though there's a lot more to it that you can't see)

The other side (the dome is where Napoleon lies) from the inner courtyard.

Another side of the building from the inner courtyard, and some cannons.

The armor of a king from back in the day. Very chic. 

The armor of a child. Hopefully this was ceremonial. 

A 3-barreled gun. Awesome, but not super practical. 

Armor for a unicorn, apparently. 

The entrance to Napoleon's tomb site. Typical. 

Napoleon's tomb. It is actually located a story below ground, underneath the tomb. 

Same thing, from the side. 

And here we are in the Catacombs. Since Paris had basically more tourists in it at this point in December than actual French people, my tour group reflected this dynamic. While standing in line (for an hour, I might add), I was able to enjoy some Italian and German commentary, as well as attempt to remain undetected by the other American tourists. 

This shot here is of the passageways through the catacombs, which were old limestone quarries (this is where the stones used to build Notre Dame were found) which created sinkholes that used to open up and swallow entire streets and/or houses. However, they were shored up and consolidated by the city of Paris around the same time as the closure of the cemetery, and so it was decided that they would be a good place to store all these bones. 

A little village carved into the limestone by one of the workers

Some skulls. 

The passageway. The entire length of the visit covers about 2 km. 

Here you can see how nice and neat they stacked the bones. In some areas there are small monuments, plaques and shrines. 

More stacking. 

All the walls are like this. 

And this. 

A diagram showing how cave-ins happened before they fortified the quarry.