Below The Streets of Paris - DO NOT TRY THIS!

As Paris grew into its a role as a major European hub, it eventually ran into a major problem: by the 17th century, enough people had lived and died in Paris that its cemeteries were overflowing, overstuffed with graves to the point when corpses, at times became uncovered. And so the solution arose to place them in the centuries-old tunnels that had existed beneath the streets of Paris since the 13th century, remnants of a time when limestone quarries were mined to build Paris into a thriving city. By the time these burials ended, 6 million Parisians' bones came to their final resting place in the city's catacombs.

Those living in the Les Halles neighborhood near Les Innocents, the city's oldest and largest cemetery were among the first to complain, reporting the cemetery exuded a strong smell of decomposing flesh—even perfume stores claimed they couldn't do business because of the off-putting smell. In 1763, Louis XV issued an edict banning all burials from occurring inside the capital, but because of Church pushback, which didn't want cemeteries disturbed or moved, nothing else was done. Louis XVI, Louis XV's successor, continued the crusade, also proclaiming that all cemeteries should be moved outside of Paris. It wasn't until 1780, however, that anything was done. That year, a prolonged period of spring rain caused a wall around Les Innocents to collapse, spilling rotting corpses into a neighboring property. The city needed a better place to put its dead.

So it went to the tunnels, moving bones from the cemeteries five stories underground into Paris' former quarries. Cemeteries began to be emptied in 1786, beginning with Les Innocents. It took the city 12 years to move all the bones—from bodies numbering between 6 and 7 million—into the catacombs. Some of the oldest date back as far as the Merovingian era, more than 1,200 years ago.

Source:
Geiling, N., March 2014, Beneath Paris’ City Streets, Smithsonian Magazine

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