We’d seen pictures of the Paris catacombs, but never really understood what they are. This was on Kristen’s to-see list, and we’d never seen it, so we waited in the sun with hundreds of other curiosity-seekers to be let in, a few at a time, to ancient underground quarries and “the domain of the dead.” The quarries date back to Roman times, snaking around under all of Paris, providing the stone from which it is built. Starting in 1786, the French government, for reasons of sanitation, moved ancient bones from churchyards into the now-abandoned tunnels. They are now arranged in patterns, in long, twisting corridors. The amount is staggering, even though you see only a small portion of the 6 million buried here. OK, now we’ve seen it and won’t have to wait in the nearly 3-hour line again.
In the afternoon, Jerry and I went off in search of hidden covered passages. The oldest one we saw dated from 1800, each a narrow pedestrian street covered with a lovely glass roof and ornately decorated, lined with used book stores and other shops and cafes.