Skulls patterned into a cross add macabre aesthetic interest along
the dark tunnels of the Catacombs.
Dark Places in the City of Light
Paris Kiosque - June 2002 - Volume 9, Number 6
Copyright (c) 2002 Robert Gray - Used with permission.
Strolling down the Rue de Rivoli on an afternoon in the month of April, my eyes swam
with images of the dead. Looking up into a bright blue Paris sky, I tried to lift my
mind from the damp, dank confines of the Catacombs, tried to pull away from the stilled-life
portraits we'd inspected so closely, tried to shake the midday chill that hung like a mist in
Cimetière Montmarte. I gazed up into a brilliant afternoon to bask in the warmth of the
sun. I felt death.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. To celebrate my wife's birthday, we planned a few romantic
days in Paris. I booked a room at the quaint Hôtel Bourg Tibourg, named for a
quiet side street in the fashionable Marais. It's a few beautiful blocks from the
Hôtel de Ville, Île de la Citée, and the
Centre G. Pompidou. We were headed for Paris in the spring: long walks, good
wine.
We opened guidebooks and clicked some links. And there it was. From just beneath the
charming surface of Paris seeped a dark and brooding surrealism, a "reality from beyond."
Death walked the narrow streets and towered in precedence over public parks. It flowed
through the tunnels and the sewers beneath the tourist's feet. It stared mutely back
from touted tombstones in the countless, famous graveyards. Even the cultural elite
was poised to pander to my fast-rising death wish with a special exhibit scheduled at
the Musée d'Orsay
of death masks, death photos, and portraits of the famous and unknown done
immediately following the final expiration.
I turned away from the light.
Marcel Proust, the author of Remembrance of Things Past
is remembered in this death-bed image on display at the
Musée d'Orsay's "Le Dernier Portrait" exhibit.
Before I knew it, I was making lists of all the dead places to visit. I began
plotting routes to each destination, creating walks that would allow me to see
all of my hot dead spots in a three-day window.
Now, though, walking along the Rue de Rivoli, I felt dazed. It dawned on me that
I could not get to every dead zone on my long list in the time allotted. For me,
time was of the essence. Besides, this was her trip, too. Fortunately, I had brought
along an old volume of Edgar Allan Poe, and, at a moment's notice,
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
and the mysterious C. Auguste Dupin could secretly transport me down into the
Parisian dankness I so hungrily desired without forcing the lovely S---- to give up
her gift-trip for my present obsession. Whenever I could, I steered her toward one of
my dark desires. The choices I made represent just a sampling of dead Paris. Herein
lies the record of these visits.
Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur
One of the great pleasures of taking the metro to the Abbesses exit in
the heart of Montmarte is coming up out of the deep tunnel through one of
the loveliest of Hector Guimard's Art-Nouveau subway entrances. The Place des
Abbesses offers a charming gateway to the neighborhood of the original Moulin Rouge,
but climbing up the 280 spiraling steps, coming out through the delicate glass-roofed
entryway, and stepping into the tidy square is a pleasure all its own.
Depending on who you ask, la Basilique du Sacré-Coeur,
just a few blocks east of the Abbesses stop, is one of Paris' prettiest or most
preposterous churches. Architect Paul Abadie (1812-1884), set out to achieve a
neo-Romano-Byzantine building, but he died long before it was consecrated in 1919.
Some like the results; others do not. One distinction that is not debated, though,
is the importance of the site of the church high on the "Butte" overlooking the city.
Montmartre, or Martyr's Mound, gets its name in part from its Roman hilltop temple
dedicated to Mercury or Mars. More important, though, a local martyr, St. Denis, is said
to have been decapitated here in about AD 250. Afterwards, he picked up his head and
walked north to the neighborhood that now bears his name (a carving of St. Denis, head
in hand, adorns the Portal to the Virgin at Cathedrale Notre-Dame
on Île de la Cité).
Cimetière Montmarte
Not as large or famous as the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise where J
im Morrison and Gertrude Stein, among many others, receive mourners and admirers,
the Cimetière Montmarte is an exquisite necropolis located partially
under the Rue Caulaincourt overpass on the western edge of the Montmartre neighborhood.
Hector Berliotz, Alexandre Dumas the Younger, and Stendhal all lay among family crypts
and elaborate tombs along these tree-lined avenues of the dead. I went looking for film
director François Truffaut and found him, dead at age 53 and buried under a flat black
marble slab, shining and inscrutable amongst the gaudy statuary.
Les Catacombes
No tour of Paris' great dead places is complete without an amble through the
catacombs. We got back on the metro at Abbesses and, a couple of connections and
20 minutes later, exited the Denfert-Rochereau stop, where the nondescript entrance t
o the catacombs is conveniently located at 1 place Denfert-Rochereau. Much of the
area was quarried in underground mines during Gallo-Roman times. In 1785, as burgeoning
Paris greedily eyed pestilential cemeteries and ad hoc burial spots as potential building
sites, it was decided that the excavations might be a good place to move the remains.
Into the newly repurposed ossuary were hauled the bones of some six million souls.
Ever the aesthetes, the Parisians who handled the placement stacked tibias like cordwood
and created stylish decorations with the nameless skulls. One of the catacombs'
attractions - there are many - is the cool air of the place. Another is imaging the
French resistance holing up deep in this place of death during the German occupation
of Paris during World War II. Bring a flashlight, and don't forget to purchase a
catacombs souvenir token, especially if you have a pre-adolescent boy on your gift list.
Conciergerie
It has been described as a place to take children to teach them the perils of misbehaving.
And, during the French revolution, the Conciergerie, part of the palais de la Cité
complex on Île de la Cité, served as a holding place for many of the bad,
childish monarchs who awaited swift trail and certain decapitation on the block of the
guillotine. Lift the little ones up to see inside the recreated cells where prisoners
awaited their fate. Slide back and peer through the slotted opening on the thick wooden
door to Marie Antoinette's cell, reproduced faithfully with two guards watching over
the condemned monarch as she sits staring at the wall and contemplating the sharp edge of
her ultimate demise. Outside of her cell an actual guillotine blade is on display, t
he stone behind it blackened by countless curious fingers laid upon the fine point of
this most famous tool of execution.
Sainte-Chappelle
Also within the palais de la Cité can be found what might arguably be Paris'
most exquisite church. Not so huge as Notre-Dame, or as outlandish and controversial
as Sacré-Coeur, Sainte-Chappell is a wonder of light, a "masterpiece of
transparency" as the guide pamphlet calls it. It was the personal undertaking of
St. Louis, King Louis IX. Built between 1242 and 1248 to house relics of Christ's Passion,
especially the Crown of Thorns, Sainte-Chappelle displayed a growing collection of
relics in the Upper Chapel, where over 6,000 square feet of stunning stained glass
windows rise up to ceiling far above. During the Revolution, these relics - including a
portion of the True Cross and reminders of both Testaments in addition to aforementioned
Crown of Thorns - were dispersed. The Lower Chapel was used primarily by palace servants
and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Its stone floor is inlaid with funerary slabs of many
treasurers and canons of the Sainte-Chappell.
The weight of Notre Dame and all of Christianity upon him, this poor devil is left to
contemplate the wages of sin for eternity.
Cathedrale Notre-Dame
Of course, death and afterlife were the central themes of the Catholic architects who,
in the 12th century, set out to build the Cathedrale Notre-Dame, which became the
yardstick by which all Gothic architecture is measured. And no trip to Paris - be it in
search of dead places or lively ones - as complete with a tour of this great building.
Entering the sanctuary is like coming face to face with mortality. The interior space seems
large enough to contain all human hopes, dreams, spirits, and souls. It soars up into
great inspiring heights and lights its stone walls and slab floor with shafts of dazzling
multicolored light from the giant stained glass windows and rosettes high above. But the
cathedral was intended to be much more than a gathering place for faithful. It was a
three-dimensional teaching tool for the largely illiterate multitudes of medieval France.
Its brooding statuary, elaborate carved portals (entryways), and exquisite wood
carvings all depict the life of Christ, the stories of the saints, and the perils of the
damned. Above it all, fantastic gargoyles gaze down with impatience and loathing
upon the masses milling around outside.
This death mask of Napoleon is notable because the exiled emperor died on the
island of St. Helena in 1821, far from Paris. His entire head was molded; copies
are still sold today.
Musée d'Orsay: "Le Dernier Portrait"
The whole death tour idea began here, with a temporary exhibit to be mounted at the
Musée d'Orsay on the Left Bank, just across the River Seine from the
Jardin des Tuileries and the outsized Louvre. Where else but in Paris, I wondered
as I read the show's review in the New York Times, could such an exhibition as
"Le Dernier Portrait" ("The Last Portrait") be mounted. Indeed, a visit to the
Musée d'Orsay, housed in a renovated train station and housing an exquisite
collection of French impressionist artists including Cézanne, Matisse, and
Lautrec, among many others, is a treat for any reason. But I smiled as I considered
the possibilities for this intimate showing of death masks, death portraits, photographs,
drawings, and reproductions - all of the famous and the ordinary captured in the
moment of death. There were death masks of Napoleon I and Marcel Proust, paintings
by Gauguin and Munch, photographs of bourgeois families gathered around their
newly-dead babies. Were these last early explorations of how best to use the
newly invented camera? If so, it is reassuring to know that the practice has lost favor.
But how fitting in this museum that celebrates light and life, the Parisian bent
toward darkness and brooding should find expression in such a lovingly mounted exhibition.
Flagstones of Death (on the way to Cimetiére du Père-Lachaise)
For the true obscurist and death tourist, the trip to
Cimetiére du Père-Lachaise
must also include at least a momentary stop at one of Paris' most foreboding
historical markers of its macabre past. Embedded in the busy street
At 16 Rue de La Croix-Faubin (metro: Voltaire), are five large granite flagstones.
Traffic drives over them. Pedestrians step on them as they cross the bustling
thoroughfare at the corner of Rue de la Roquette. Few take note of them.
But they the somber reminders of France's past commitment to the death penalty - and
to its effective fulfillment. For it was upon these five stones that the guillotine,
brought out at night from the Grande-Roquette prison, built in 1836
(and demolished in 1899), was set by the executioner's assistants. The level
surface created by these five flagstones ensured that the blade fell straight
down to death's swift conclusion. For the condemned, this was a place of finality.
For the curious, the stones are all that remain.
For a city so renowned for its liveliness, its vivacity, and its lights,
Paris also has a great dark side. That doesn't make it dreary. Au contraire.
It gives it depth, and for me, that its allure. Like a dusty classic filled
with stories of the long gone and unyet born, the pages of Paris stand up to
reading and rereading - in the light of morning, and in the dead of night.
Robert Gray is a professional writer based in Baltimore, Maryland. He has
traveled to and written about the rainforest of Ecuador, Buddhist
monasteries in Sri Lanka, and the volcanoes of Iceland. You can learn more
at
http://www.writingandediting.com.
Contact him at bob@writingandediting.com.
Editor's Note:
Dear Readers, while our writers are always
delighted to hear and to receive comments, both about their columns in the The Paris Kiosque,
as well as your experiences in Paris,
they are unable to answer any requests
for travel information.
Thank you for your understanding.
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