Where there’s light, there’s shadow …
So, it only makes sense that Paris, for all its glamour and shimmer, has a dark side. Read on for five Parisian places that will send shivers down your spine (in the best possible way, of course).
The Catacombs of Paris
Paris’s underground ossuary, said to hold the remains of more than six million Parisians, dates back to 1780, when each inner-city district had its own cemetery. The Cimitière des Innocents, by the old Les Halles market, was so close to bursting … that it actually did, caving and crashing into basements of neighbouring houses. The Catacombs was a way to move the problem out to the city’s edge, thus improving civic hygiene, and make use of some of the empty underground limestone quarries that had been burrowed away for centuries.
Spare a thought for the guys who had to dig up and transport the skeletons from Paris’s cemeteries, which were gradually closed — and for those who had to stack and line up all the bones and skulls. (Granted, they did do an artistic job of it; see above.) To this day, a visit to the Catacombs is not for the faint-hearted (nor claustrophobic); you enter through one of the old tollhouses known, quite appropriately, as the Barrière d’Enfer (Gate of Hell).
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Paris’s Cemeteries
From the early 1800s, several large cemeteries were developed on the outskirts of Paris. Those of Père-Lachaise, Montparnasse, and Montmartre are now iconic for their gothic glamour as much as for their star-studded resident ghosts. For more, read Memory Lane: Three Paris Cemeteries to Stroll Around.
The Conciergerie
Located on Île de la Cité, the Conciergerie is most notorious as Marie-Antoinette’s final prison, but the building has served various purposes throughout its long history, since its days as a royal palace. The first space you step into is the Salle des Gens d’Armes, from 1302, the old soldiers’ room and the largest medieval hall in Europe, with its echoing arches pointing upwards to dramatically lit ribbed-vault ceilings. A ‘HistoPad’ lets you digitally travel back to its early glory days of banquet tables and roaring fires, and a glimpse into the old kitchen is fascinating. But despite this virtual visit back to the Middle Ages, it’s impossible to forget that the Conciergerie became an infamous jail.
A sense of gloom seems to hang in the air, especially in the Salle des Gardes, where in 1793 Robespierre set up his fearsome Revolutionary Tribunal, and in the old prison wing, which is sure to give you chills. Other one-time prison cells display information on Paris during revolutionary times. You can also see the creepy Grooming Room, where prisoners had their hair cut before their appointment with the guillotine, and walk through the courtyard where female prisoners washed themselves. The expiatory chapel, ordered in 1815 by Louis XVIII, Marie Antoinette’s former brother-in-law, is located on the site of her final cell. It’s all rather grim, but historically fascinating, too.
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The Pantheon Crypt
The Pantheon, originally planned as a church devoted to Paris’s patron saint Geneviève, was almost complete when the French Revolution broke out. The new parliament voted to transform the grand edifice into a mausoleum for the remains of France’s most distinguished citizens. The monument’s crypt lies underground, and it’s a dark, dank, spine-chilling kind of a place, though well worth a visit to pay respects to the inspiring likes of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Germaine Tillion, and Joséphine Baker.
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Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
The Museum of Hunting and Nature is probably more quirky than spooky — although animal lovers and vegetarians might well shudder here. Nevertheless, it’s a wildly unique experience. Think chairs fashioned from deer antlers, and stuffed animals with stunned or angry looks on their faces, no doubt victim to the olde-worlde guns that are displayed in glossy cabinets redolent with the musty aroma of furniture polish. The décor of this seventeenth-century townhouse is jaw-dropping: tapestry chairs against jewel-coloured brocade walls, heaving crystal chandeliers glittering above shiny parquetry, gilt-framed drama-filled paintings, and occasional conceptual pieces like a ceiling covered in beady-eyed owls. You feel like you’re in the grand house of a slightly sociopathic aristo-eccentric who could leap out from a secret door at any time, toting a diamond-encrusted rifle and velvet riding suit. Or like you’re walking through a madcap secret nightclub. It’s a weirdly wonderful rabbit-hole experience (except, sadly, not so much for rabbits.)
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