Swallowed up and spit back out – The Catacombs of Paris

Paris was a trip. During my time there I encountered the most random people. Some were incredibly fun to be around. Others thought it would be fair to offer a place in exchange for sexual favours. And some of them showed me something even most Parisians don’t get to experience in their lifetime: The famous catacombs of Paris.

Everybody knows the commercial catacombs. You stand in line for three hours, walk through a course that lets you see all the sights you would expect from a place that houses six million dead people, and exit through a gift shop. But when my friend Thomas asked me if I want to see the catacombs with him, he wasn’t even slightly referring to that.

He meant the vast, neverending network of tunnels that can take you from one little cellar door all the way across the city. Wherever you want to go, there’s probably some way of getting there using the catacombs. But obviously there’s a risk in making that descent.

We packed water, headlamps, bananas and spare socks. You should definitely make sure you’re in good company. Trust me, you don’t want to be there alone when it’s your first time.
We met up at a downtown Paris metro station and briefly talked to each other before going up to a sewer cover. Our so-to-speak guide opened it and one by one we climbed down a ladder. My feet had just touched to ground when he shouted “Les fliques! Cours, cours!” (Rough translation goes: “Run, it’s the police!”)
Without a second thought we ran down a narrow tunnel. To our left there were thick cables and pipes attached to the wall and going on as far as your headlamp managed to shine. God knows how far they keep on going. All I could do was sheepishly follow the guy in front of me. We all ran along the dark shaft until suddenly our guide told us to stop. We followed suit and watched him bend down underneath the cables. He removed a plank from the wall and opened up a small hole, roughly the size of a mid-size dog. We all looked at it bewildered. On the other side there could be anything, with only darkness being certain. So one by one my friends crawled through. It was a hole inside of a hole and we had arrived to the guts of Paris. The actual catacombs.

There wasn’t any particular smell, at least nothing I thought it would smell like. No rotting bodies or hordes of rats. One of my friends put on rave music and played it loud. Down there, nobody can hear you. In this case both a comforting and unsettling thought. When we started going in one direction the rave music acted as a pacemaker. There was no strolling around, only rushing down the corridors, which at time caved in to the point of us having to crawl through. You could only see as far as your headlamp shined. Without it, you’d have to face a never-ending darkness.

We jogged through the tunnels for about 20 minutes until we reached the first actual “place”, a small hall with benches made from clay. We weren’t the only ones there. A couple other people were casually sitting, drinking their beers and talking to each other. Everybody was polite but reserved. I had thought about it before: In the catacombs, there are no rules or laws to follow. I was surprised by how much the absence of any kind of law enforcement unsettled me. There were also different assets to that situation. The catacombs have become a free for all place to shape and express yourself. People shape the clay into figures and spray intricate and not-so-intricate graffiti onto the the walls. Most of them wonderfully ambient with the fact that you’re roaming six million peoples grave.

We stayed for about half an hour and walked on until we met somebody I’ll never forget. Out of nowhere there suddenly were two chicks, looking like they were on a regular night out, sipping on a bottle by themselves in the dark. They told us not to go where we were headed, because we would have to turn around. When we got there we saw what they meant.
The floor was entirely under water. Our lights made the water look green and toxic as we waded through what seemed like two hundred meters of catacomb juice. My shoes were soaked. Soggy shoes are among the most uncomfortable things I experienced this summer. But there never was much time to lose. We just kept going deeper and deeper into the network of tunnels.

Funnily enough, the high point of my trip into the catacombs was not seeing the bones of the deceased. It easily could have been that, since when we stumbled upon the remains there was no way of not stepping on them. The bones covered the floor in a small circular niche with just enough space for five people to be inside at once.

By three o’clock we met Aztec and a friend of his. Both were learned Cataphiles with rainboots and folders filled with anecdotes from below. Our guide seemingly knew them, or at least trusted them enough to guide us to the next couple of destinations.  There was a movie theatre, a small “cathedral” with a bottomless pit and a miniature castle made from clay and populated by little figurines, that people had brought.

All these places are always evolving. People go down to build and transform, with some projects taking up massive amounts of time.

One of the cataphiles said to us “Sometimes I dream about walking through these tunnels. I wake up with nothing but the wish to go back down. There’s nothing that calms me like being down here.”, and I could understand that fully.
Up on the surface, there is a whole world bustling and rushing. Just twenty meters under the busy streets, there is perfect peace. No light, no sound, no decisions. It’s all so wonderfully simple down there. You are surrounded by earth and stone with the tunnel only going two ways. Somehow it is the exact opposite of the overview effect.

After seven hours of being in the catacombs, I got to a point of euphoria. It didn’t feel like the walls were constricting me anymore. Suddenly I felt as if I was floating through space. My ambitions completely reduced to following my friends down another tunnel, through another hole, in and out of water, as far as I could go.

But sooner or later, my wet feet got awfully cold and my pullover no longer managed to warm my body that was seriously lacking sleep.

When we got back to the surface the night had passed. It was an early morning in late summer with slight cold breezes rolling through the streets.
We said goodbye to our guides and looted the next bakery for fresh pain au chocolat, an adventurer’s breakfast. As I left, I realised, that my shoes had leaked water onto the floor, leaving behind small puddles with every step.

Yours truly,

Sebastian