Paris 2008 (13)

More photos from the Catacombs...

A quarry inspector named named Décure is responsible for other sculptures in the Catacombs. He had an interesting, but unenviable, life. He was a veteran of the armies of Louis XV but was captured by the English and locked up in the fortress of Port-Mahon, principal city of Minorque in the Balearic Islands. The sculptures date from 1777 to 1782. Décure was killed when a sinkhole opened up whilst he was helping build an access stairway from an upper level.

One of Décure's sculptures

Décure's sculpture of Port-Mahon

Patty in the Catacombs

My French is appalling but I knew what that sign above Patty's head means. Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la Mort means Stop, this is the empire of the dead. She still had no idea what she was going to see when she stepped through that doorway...

The Catacombs of Paris

Towards the end of the eighteenth century some of Paris’s cemeteries were literally overflowing with around 30 generations of burials. Leakage of liquids from the cemeteries into the water supply were spreading disease and in 1785 the first of the cemeteries were cleared and the human remains placed in the Catacombs. The Catacombs contain the remains of around 6 million people.

The catacombs aren't scary. We thought they were fascinating,

Patty's knees where hurting her again and the two mile walk underground didn't help at all.
In fact, she had an artificial knee fitted shortly after getting back to the United States

After the Catacombs we took the Metro to Montmartre and the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur...

These posters were everywhere.
Shitz - Guerre, armour et saucisson (Shitz - War, love and sausages) was written by Israeli Hanokh levin and had very mixed reviews.
Apparently it's about a woman and her fiance who is intent on getting rich off her parents.

This page created 13th September 2011, last modified 13th September 2011