Ashes to Ashes

This is the story of the Catacombs of Paris:

The remains in the Catacombs come from another time, when bodies were still burried in Paris and the living brushed shoulders with the dead.  Eventually, the cemetaries were overflowing and the Parisians wanted to purge the city of this insalubrious excess, so the old quarries on the edge of the city became the catacombs.

There is an aura of dark romanticism surrounding the catacombs - like a gothic novel full of madness, buried family secrets, and bloody deeds done by moonlight.  The catacombs encourage this attitude with a macabre theatricality.  A sign over the entrance to the ossuary reads "ARRETE : C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT." (Stop! Here lies the empire of death)

The walls are lined with femurs and tibias tightly packed, broken in half by rows of jawless skulls, illuminated and thrown into shadow in equal measure by the wall sconces.  This carefully arranged display is interffupted by plaques bearing quotation on shuffling off this mortal coil, etc :

Ils furent ce que nous sommes

Poussière, jouet de vent ;

Fragiles commes des hommes,

Faibles comme le néant !

Lamartine

And though regularly cleaned, the corners hold the dusty traces of a second death - one of bones - and the promise of what we will one day become.

Dust to Dust,
Maria

P.S. It's hard to take good pictures in caves when using flash is verboten...