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Paris Underground Guide
here are more than 177 records history with originality,
miles of man-made tunnels creativity and style. New
and disused quarries under material is continually being
the streets of Paris. These added, it is rare anything is
cavernous spaces have become a removed, and after 300 years a
focal point for urban culture and riot of imagery and objects have
creativity, resulting in a amassed, making a startling and
private treasure-house of art, unique environment.
music and writing. For over 300
years anonymous and illicit Paris has huge subterranean
visitors have sought to cavities, built in 2000 years of
memorialize and comment on events history for many purposes like
above ground. Hidden in the quarries, religious hideout, beer
darkness, and working in cellars, subways and bunkers.
uncomfortable conditions, they Most of the excavations are
have created paintings, drawings, located at the base of the three
graffiti, and sculpture on the “mountains” - Montparnasse,
walls on the walls of the tunnels Montrouge and Montsouris. There
as well as ephemeral paper works are approximately 300km of
that are concealed in the stone. galleries all together, not all
of them are connected.
Some visitors have been
fugitives, many have simply Cataphiles have been illicitly
sought a place to create producing art in the underground
undisturbed. Their subject matter since the early 1980s and their
is varied and often subversive, paintings are found over a large
it ranges from current events and area of the quarry network. It is
politics to the poetic and an atmosphere that has encouraged
downright strange; but whatever many artists to look inwards
the subject, the underground art rather than outwards to produce
meditative, contemplative and from the usage as graves. This
decidedly personal impressions of name is sometimes used for all
subjects that are always the underground caverns of Paris,
extraordinary and frequently but the tourist spot, open to the
bizarre - monsters and beasts, public, are the graves. They do
phantoms and ghouls are not really promote them to
favorites; futuristic topics tourists, but they are open to
recur; and politics, religion and the public. At the end of the
sex inevitably find wall space. 18th century, the government
The dimensions of the kata-art began converting several
ranges from small mosaics that is subterranean rooms into mass
no more than ten centimeters in graves. This was necessary to
diameter, to large ceramics of meet desperate overcrowding in
two meters high, or huge the medieval cemeteries in the
paintings that are in excess of center of Paris, which also
twenty meters wide. became a hygienic problem. From
1785 to 1786, in 15 months,
The Catacombs has many dates on millions of bones and rotting
the walls to indicate work done corpses were transported from the
to consolidate the existing unsanitary city cemetery in Les
quarries, an enormous project to Halles to this place. It was a
catalogue the location of the colossal project to transport the
many unknown parts of the bones in huge carts at night
quarries and shore up their across the city.
ceilings to allow Paris to grow.
It was these efforts that were And here they are, in huge piles,
responsible for linking the arranged as crosses, as faces and
entire tunnel system together. in other different
configurations. Above the door
The name catacombs are derived outside are the words - in French
- Stop! This is the empire of death.
About the Author:
Anil Gupta recommends that you visit http://www.bookings.fr/city/fr/paris.html?aid=305255 for more information on Paris hotels.
Read more articles by: Anil Gupta
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