Dungeons of the City of Light

The French capital is often called the City of Light. The facades of houses made of light stone, wide avenues, the yellowish waters of the Seine, and now the beautiful night illumination - really give the impression that the city is always filled with light. However, there is no less reason to call Paris and the City of Darkness, because in the Parisian darkness there are hidden treasures of centuries that can compete with those that are generously illuminated by the sun. Under the endless stream of cars and pedestrians of this great city lies another world, the existence of which few guess. Hundreds of kilometers of mysterious galleries, known as the Parisian catacombs, are ancient quarries, from where medieval inhabitants of the city took materials for its construction.

The Legacy of Antiquity

Already in Antiquity on the banks of the Seine, limestone and gypsum were mined by the open method. The Romans brought with them the traditions of stone construction, allowing to provide a higher level of comfort in the dwelling. In addition, the buildings erected from stone, much better resisted the onslaught of time than wooden buildings. The love of the Romans to the stone was reflected even in the Latin name of Paris - Lutetia, which, according to one version, comes from the Latin lucotis, that is, "whiteness", denoting the color of the stony banks of the Seine. Thanks to this for the geological era, corresponding to the period of limestone formation, the name lutecien was strengthened. Since the XII century, the development of underground resources began. The increased architectural ambitions of the Parisians materialized in dozens of renovated abbeys, cathedrals and churches. The Romanesque style, and then the gothic that came to replace it, sharply increased the need for building materials.

The first underground development of limestone was under the territory of the modern Luxembourg garden. Then, around 1200, the districts of the current hospital of Val de Gras, streets of Gobelin, Saint-Jacques, Vaujilles, Saint-Germain-des-Prés followed. From the stone taken from under King Philippe Augustus (1180-1223), Louis the Blessed (1226-1270) and Philip the Beautiful (1285-1314), the Louvre, Saint-Chapel and the Notre-Dame de Paris were built.

Since the XV century, a two-level limestone development has begun. Quarries that have exhausted their reserves in width, were developed in depth. Thus, under the existing network of galleries, a second floor was created. This became possible due to a change in the technique of raising the extracted materials to the surface. If earlier any underground gallery sooner or later came out under the open sky, where the stone was delivered to the destination, now for the extraction of stone blocks began to use wells, at the top of which winches were installed. They were set in motion by either a person walking inside the wheel or horses.

Currently, near Paris there are about 300 km of galleries, with most of them located on the left bank of the Seine. The fact that there are many more former quarries there is not accidental. In the north of the city, mostly gypsum was mined, while on the left, southern, limestone. The demand for limestone has always been higher, accordingly, initially development on the left bank was significantly larger. In addition, since the gypsum was easily washed with water, the empty quarries of the right bank concealed a more visible danger in themselves. Therefore, in the process of strengthening the Parisian dungeons, the gypsum quarries turned out to be almost completely filled with cement.

In the name of the General Inspectorate

The extraction of stone was carried out mainly in those areas that at that time were urban outskirts. However, the expansion of residential urban space, at first - during the Renaissance and later - under Louis XIV, led to the fact that by the XVII century the lands that enclosed the former quarries were already within the city limits, and a significant part of the residential areas - actually erected above the emptiness .

The situation was complicated by the fact that during those centuries that had passed since the beginning of the development of the Parisian stone, the exact location of the underground galleries, which had been chaotically torn out in the past, without any definite plan, was forgotten. Frequent cases of collapses eventually led to the fact that at the end of the 18th century large-scale works were begun to strengthen the underground ceilings.

In April 1777, King Louis XVI issued a special decree on the establishment of a General Inspection of quarries. Separate attempts to strengthen underground galleries were undertaken, of course, before, but then it was a question of erecting any fortification structures only under newly built buildings, but not about the entire city as a whole. The tasks of the newly established state organization included the drawing up of a detailed plan for Parisian underground galleries and the widespread implementation of measures to strengthen them. The head of the Inspection was appointed royal architect Charles-Axel Guillaume.

As if ironically, the moment of the creation of the Inspectorate coincided with the next collapse of underground floors in Denfer Street in the 14th district, which led to human casualties. That is why the task facing the engineers and architects who carried out the work to strengthen the underground galleries was so urgent that these works were not interrupted either during the turbulent and bloody years of the French Revolution, or later, during the events of 1870-1871. I must say that the need to monitor the state of the Parisian dungeons has not lost its relevance to this day, so the Inspection still exists.

Then, in order to draw up a detailed plan for the network of underground galleries, it was first necessary to establish which streets, churches, or other construction and engineering facilities are on the surface above each underground gallery. This task was not easy, because if the tablets with the names of streets appeared in Paris in 1728-1729, then the numbering of houses in the city did not exist until 1778. That is, in fact it turned out that the grandiose work on both ground and underground numbering were conducted simultaneously.

At the crossroads of underground galleries hung signs with the name of the street passing from above, and in the event that on the way there were two parallel galleries along one street, the side of the street was pointed in relation to the sun, that is, either the rising sun or the setting sun. Under the most significant, in religious and social relations, buildings on the walls of underground galleries were knocked out the symbol of the French monarchy - the lily flower. After the Revolution, the old numbering system was, indeed, abolished as monarchical and virtually all the flowers of the lily were destroyed. However, up to now, in Parisian dungeons, there are still about 150 such royal signs, apparently because some of them were in inaccessible places, and some were carefully hidden from the eyes of the crowd by the royalist-minded working clay sub-layer.

Approximately at the same time, within the framework of the relentless struggle of the revolutionary people with religion from the names of streets - both land and underground - everything that could be caused by religious associations was removed. Sometimes the streets were simply renamed, and sometimes some of them were "elegantly" removed some extra words. For example, St. Jacques St. Jacques became Jacques Street and so on.

Since 1805, the existing numbering system for dividing the numbering of one side of the street by even numbers, and the other by odd number has been introduced. Similarly, all the works were numbered. On each newly erected fortifying wall there were figures and letters which to the uninitiated could seem very mysterious. Although in reality only the number of the works carried out was indicated, the date and initials of the chief engineer. Some confusion in the perception of this system, of course, brought the fact that from 1794 to 1806 the dates were naturally indicated by the revolutionary calendar that led the chronology from the first year of the revolution. However, for the sake of justice, it should be noted that some revolutionary innovations have withstood the test of time with success.

Introduced during the French Revolution metric system has taken root not only in France, but also in most countries of the world. Although at one time the transfer of all underground and terrestrial measurements from the old system to the new system required a lot of effort and time. And it was made with such thoroughness that it sometimes reached such curiosities as, for example, an indication of one thousandth of a millimeter when measuring the depth of a well.

The dwelling of death

Almost at the same time, when the famous Inspectorate was created, the Paris quarries, having received yet another new appointment, acquired a new name. It was connected with another kingdom of darkness, even more distant than the endless Parisian dungeons, the realm of death. Unlike the pagan beliefs of the ancient Romans who arranged necropolises in desert territories outside populated cities, the Christian tradition demanded the burial of the deceased on the sacred ground adjacent to the church. Thus, Christian cemeteries were everywhere located in the center of settlements. In the Middle Ages, the high mortality rate was the reason that all the cemeteries in the city of Paris were completely overcrowded. This situation was seriously burdened by plague epidemics, which are so rich in the history of France.

For example, in the Innocent cemetery, which functioned from the 11th century and was only a few hundred meters from the Louvre, the level of the surface inside the cemetery fence was 6 meters (!) Above the level of the sidewalks of all adjacent streets. There were, of course, individual graves, but mostly common, when up to 1,500 people could be buried in one grave. That is why by the end of the 18th century the situation became so explosive - both from the sanitary and from the criminal (cemeteries attracted not the most respectable public) points of view, that there was a need for taking the most urgent measures. In 1763 the Parliament of Paris issued a decree prohibiting the burial of the dead inside the walls of the city. But finally this decision began to be realized only in 1780, when the wall separating the Innocent cemetery from the houses located on the neighboring street - rue de la Lengeri, collapsed, filling the cellars of the houses with remains of dead and monstrous amount of dirt and Impurity. It turned out that the famous Russian proverb about a peasant who, until the thunder strikes, does not cross himself, is equally applicable to kings, at least, French.

In addition to all this, in the center of Paris, there was a catastrophic lack of at least some free space, including for the construction of the market, which was reported by operations to close and transfer cemeteries very vital economic interest. And as this process coincided in time with the beginning of large works in the Paris quarries, extensive underground spaces were decided to be used for reburial of the remains of the deceased, which had accumulated over the long years of the existence of the cemetery.

In 1785, the State Council decided to transfer the Innocent cemetery to the former quarries of Tomb Issoir, located outside the city limits. The underground "after-burial mansions" were to be appropriately equipped - they were to be decorated with Christian symbols and appropriate moments with phrases reminding potential visitors about the fragility and vanity of life and grandeur and the inevitability of death. From the same time, the name "catacombs" (from the Greek cata - "under" and combe - "grave") was established behind the quarries by association with the Roman catacombs, which served as the burial place, and sometimes the prayers of the first Christians. However, such a similarity of names sometimes confuses visitors who believe that the Parisian catacombs, like the catacombs of the Eternal City, served as the abode of early Christians, which is not true.


Well, then the management of the operation to transfer the bones was entrusted to the same Guilma, the head of the Inspectorate. He from the very beginning planned to make underground cemeteries open to visitors. In his design, all the bones had to be stacked with neat shafts, which were supposed to be crowned with rows of skulls. However, the soon vague revolutionary era did not bypass its "attention" and the underground kingdom. The re-burial became chaotic, the remains were often simply dropped into the nearest mines or wells that were used once to extract the stone to the surface. Also in the catacombs were the bodies of new dead and executed, which significantly complicated the underground sanitary situation. After all, it was originally intended to re-bury only the ancient remains, that is, in fact only dry bones.