A Few Stories From France That Are Capturing My Attention This Week

....from a study on the diseases of people buried in the Paris Catacombs, to possible new tourist levies on non-EU citizens

This week, there are a few France-related stories that have managed to capture my wayward attention. I think you might find them interesting, too— so let’s get to it.

Forensic analysis is being performed on bones at the Paris Catacombs as part of a recent research study/Scientists examine the bones of Parisians in the catacombs. Credit: Philippe Charlier/LAAB/UVSQ

For anyone who’s already visited the Parisian Catacombs, you’ll know it’s an experience that’s not easily shaken off, even if you’re not claustrophobic or averse to contemplating your own mortality. Traversing a narrow, mile-long corridor lined with the remains of some six million people— femurs, skulls and all, almost artfully arranged in tightly formed heaps— you’re witnessing the incredible feat of public management that saw the creation of the catacombs in the 18th century, when several overcrowded cemeteries were exhumed.

Such was the weight of the corpses that filled the Cimetière des Innocents, near Les Halles in Paris city center, that there are (credible) reports of patrons in cellar bars witnessing walls caving in and human remains falling in alongside the rubble. The stench was also reportedly unbearable in certain areas, and there were also credible concerns about contamination to local water supply. It was, to put it lightly, a bit of a hygiene crisis for the city.

Luckily, the capital’s many layers of limestone bedrock, already significantly hollowed to supply local industrial quarries and build up the city, provided ample underground space for the remains of millions of defunct denizens. And so the Catacombs were gradually constructed, re-organized in the early 19th century after the bones were more or less unceremoniously dumped below-ground in the late 18th century.

Now, for the first time, scientists are working to analyze some of the bones in hopes of learning more about the lives and health of the people whose identities had largely been effaced when their remains were transferred to les Catacombes— or even earlier, when they were dumped into fossés communes (mass graves).