Les secrets de la Ville de Lumiere

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are copyright of my friend, travel partner, and fellow guerilla urbanist Steve Duncan. Steve is a wonderful photographer, and specializes in underground and urban photography. Prints are available - visit his website at http://www.undercity.org

One of the most interesting things about this trip was getting to see the different layers of Paris. The catacombs themselves had some layers - often there were two different levels above each other, with manholes, stairs, and ladders further adding a three-dimensional element of height and depth. But visiting the catacombs also exposed us to the layers of Paris as a whole. Here’s a few examples.

Our Hotel: View from street level, view of our second-floor room (that’s the cata map on the table), view from the roof, view from underneath in the catacombs.

The Val de Grace: View from street level, view from underneath in the catacombs

The Cemetery Montparnasse: View from above, view from ground level, view from the catacombs underneath the western end, view from the ossuaries underneath the eastern end.

While we only visited the Cemetery Montparnasse in order to get a ground-level shot above the ossuaries, I actually discovered a few famous graves - the first being Alfred Dreyfus (of the famous Dreyfus Affair), and his family, (some of whom, as you can tell from the grave, were deported to Auschwitz). The second was a joint grave: Simone de Beauvoir and her “longtime companion,” Jean-Paul Sartre. I felt very French (and was endlessly amused) when I got to tell Steve to literally “meet me at the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre.” I also thought I had found the grave of Dr. Jack Kevorkian (one of the people he helped commit suicide, Merian Frederick, actually used to be our neighbor). I was a little thrown by the “Aram” before the “Jack Kevorkian,” but I figured this quote at the bottom of the grave was kind of indicative of the Jack Kevorkian we all know. But I was wrong - Dr. Jack’s currently still alive and in jail, while it’s lawyer and newsletter publisher Jack Kevorkian who died in 2003 and is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery.

The shot of the cemetery from above was taken from the Tour Montparnasse - the best and least appreciated of the observation decks of Paris. In addition to our unofficial views, I had been up the Eiffel Tower on an earlier trip (as related here), and also went up to the roof of the Notre Dame on this trip. My advice is to save your money (and time spent waiting in line) for the Eiffel Tower, go on the Notre Dame tour only for the up-close view of the gothic architecture, and make sure to hit the roof of the Tour Montparnasse. Don’t pay though - just say you’re going up to the restaurant. Nobody checks tickets for the roof. And while the daytime view is certainly nice, make sure you’re up there at night - and you’ll see that Paris has truly earned its nickname of the City of Light.

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are copyright of my friend, travel partner, and fellow guerilla urbanist Steve Duncan. Steve is a wonderful photographer, and specializes in underground and urban photography. Prints are available - visit his website at http://www.undercity.org  

We took one more quick trip with David into the Catacombs.   There’s plenty written about the catacombs (in fact, David contributed to this book) - unfortunately for me, they’re pretty much all in French.   So while spending hours exploring on our own was great, it was also really nice going with an expert guide who could answer our questions and explain all the interesting things in depth.   We also got to go the fun way again: opening up a manhole in the sidewalk and climbing down instead of schlepping down the abandoned rail tracks. There was pretty much only one place we hadn’t seen that we wanted to: underneath the Val de Grace.  

David set the pace.    Throughout the convoluted, hour-plus journey he didn’t glance at the map once.   It got a bit tricky toward the end: we had to duck under some cables and navigate a shallow archway filled 3/4 of the way high with water, and then wiggle through about 100 feet of this.

We emerged into here, and continued further underneath the Val de Grace.   There’s probably no other area of the catacombs that has more history - both true and apocryphal - associated with it.     It’s most noteworthy for its association with Queen Anne of Austria - and even has a section named for her.   It is said that it was here that she conspired with her Spanish relatives against her husband, Louis XIII (they’re the King and Queen in the Three Musketeers).   Its structure seems to reflect this brush with royalty also.   While understandably most everything in the catacombs seemed to be designed without much regard for aesthetics, under the Val de Grace things, like this gate, seemed to all have a little extra ornamentation thrown in.   It’s also one of the oldest parts of the catacombs, discovered in the 1600s when Louis and Anne commissioned a church and abbey to be built for the celebration of the birth of their son and heir, Louis XIV.  

While tales of royal intrigue are all very romantic, the most interesting thing we came across was much more mundane - the bottom of the Queen’s Chamberpot.   Yes, when residing at Val de Grace, right here is where the Queen’s other dirty business ended up.  

We were a little Catacombed-out after our 30-hour marathon trip. Still, that didn't mean we weren't still up for seeing more of the hidden side of town. Steve wanted to visit the sewers before we left (there's actually an official ... [Continue reading this entry]

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are copyright of my friend, travel partner, and fellow guerilla urbanist Steve Duncan. Steve is a wonderful photographer, and specializes in underground and urban photography. Prints are available - visit his website at [Continue reading this entry]