You want me to move what?

Itinerary

The old limestone mines turned ossuary.

The "Australian" Ron Muerk

A trip to Luxembourg to sail boats

 

 

The Catacombs

So one day in 1774 the Parisian ground caved in - literally. Houses sank into the ground and the entire street caved in. Turns out that the many kilometres of underground tunnels from which limestone had been mined over the years, had become unstable and collapsed. Oops. Nobody realized just how many tunnels were under the city of Paris, but the weight of the houses and growing Parisian infrastructure, became too much for the aging tunnels and now they were a problem.

Around the same time, the biggest cemetery of Paris (The Cemetery of the Innocent) became too full. The Romans had buried the dead (well probably dead) outside of the city coz thats what they did - clever folk. The rise of Christianity and loss of Roman wisdom saw burials occurring within the city walls. Then the cemeteries began to get crowded which was not good for the Parishes as they used to get burial $$. So they started using "mass graves" in a big central cemetery for all those who could not afford to pay for a nice church burial. In a marketing ploy, that mass grave cemetery became known as the "Cemetery of the Innocents"

So after a good 1000 years or so, by late 1700s, the cemetery was too full. Mass graves would collapse allowing old bones to cascade into nearby houses giving neighbours a nasty surprise should their wall be nearby. The miasmas were thick and putrid and vermin roamed the area. The masses of decomposing bodies began leaking bad bits into the water table and the folk of Paris were getting sick - everybody knew that the closer you were to the cemetery, the quicker you got sicker.

Finally King Louis came up with a plan which got ratified by Parliament and became law for a while.

• Plan A: Don't bury the dead! After a while it turned out that this plan had a few consequences so he hit on a second plan
• Plan B was also a cracker - move all the bones from the cemetery to a new resting place!

OK - so thats what they did coz its good to be the king and its not so good to be the undertaker "you want me to move what?"

The new place became the unused old limestone mine tunnels now known as the Catacombs or the "Municipal Ossuary". It took 2 years - they moved the bones at night in carts with black blankets over the top. They think the remains represent about 6 million people.

There are over 250km of underground tunnels of which we walked through 2kms this morning. About 300000 people per year do the same walk of which, when we lined up, about 250000 had chosed today to be the one to get to the Catacombs.

As an aside, the street that collapsed in 1774 was called Rue d'Enfer which translates to "Hell Street". Later it became known as Denfert-Rochereau which was perhaps, not coincidentally where we started out trip into the Catacombs.

We line up for about 90 minutes for our 45 minute walkthrough. Turns out they let in 200 when the gates open and then only let in more as those 200 leave - so after the first bit of line movement there was none for about 40 minutes! Nice system.

 

 

 

Also, for some of the wait, it was raining

 

 

 

Just waiting

 

 

 

Still waiting

 

 

 

OK, we are in!

 

 

 

 

 

The head bone's connected to the knee bone?

 

 

 

Looks like Voldemort

 

 

 

Sheesh.

 

 

 

 

Cartier Foundation:

An exhibition started today by an ex-Melbourne sculptor called Ron Muerk (he was born in Melbourne but has lived in Germany and has lived in London since 1986 but as he is now famous he is claimed as Australian).

Actually he isn't a sculptor, but a "hyper-realist sculptor" who was a builder and a puppeteer on the muppets and Fraggle rock.

We got to the exhibition (at the Cartier foundation) after first looking up the Cartier watch store and then realizing the error of our ways.

You aren't allowed to take photos so here are some from the web - its quite extraordinary. Hopefully this gives a sense of the realism and perspective of the sculpture sizes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its all in the hand hold

 

 

 

 

After the exhibition, we strolled along, took a couple of pics then arrived at Luxembourg gardens. The French think of Asia as India and kinda group the rest of Asia into one big group of places that food comes from.

 

 

 

 

 

The gardens

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had forgotten that the parks get closed at night

 

 

 

The Luxembourg gardens are about 50 acres of public space of which we strolled through about 2. An acre is about 4000 square metres. I just read that the definition of an acre is 1/640th of a square mile.

Although the acre is no longer used officially, neither are feet and inches in many places. The origin of the acre is the size of land a farmer could plough in a day with two oxen held together by one of those wood harness things (yoke). It was then defined a a size of land 40 perches by 4 perches (660 feet by 66 feet). The rod is a unit of length equal to 5½ yards, 16½ feet or 1⁄320th of a statute mile.

I copied and pasted the following italicized to make the point that we are lucky we now have the simple metric system (although I do know a few lugs). Since the adoption of the international yard on 1 July 1959, it has been equivalent to exactly 5.0292 meters. A rod is the same length as a perch or a pole. In old English, the term lug is also used.

But back to the gardens. At the North side is a large palace that is now the the French Senate. It looks a lot like the Pitti Palace in Florence mainly because it is a replica of it. MArie De Medici (there they are again). Over the years the garden was made bigger then bits were sold off to real estate developers who provded the King with a nice little kickback. After the revolution. land around the remaining garden was "appropriated" by the Republic. They did this by taking it away from the Monks who were living on the land at the time. Its how democracy works?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hired two wooden sailboats and the kids hit the lovely pond to push the boats and watch them sail. The sticks may also be used, as Drew and Grady proved, as excellent dueling swords. The boats are very clever and catch the wind without ever sinking. You know your boat as the sails are each from a different country - one lucky kid gets the slightly bigger, faster pirate ship.

 

 

 

Mmmmm, murky green water

 

 

 

Zoe pushes her boat - note pirate ship lurking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the evening, a surprise babysitter arrived (well, a surprise to me). Ree and I went strolling the streets of the city, had a drink and then went to a movie - I know, its not the most exciting thing to do but we LOVED it. We went to see "Searching for Sugarman", a documentary that is much more than a documentary. It won the Academy Award last year and was voted by both of us as the best film we have seen in "ages". See it.

Reminds me of another "Searching" movie I loved from years ago - "Searching for Bobby Fisher" . Getting looks - gotta go to Noter Dame aka Notre Dame.

 

 

Enough