Fancy going to the empire of death on your next holiday?
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Version 0 of 1. As I descend into the Parisian catacombs, my companion, Max, lets out a groan behind me. He has followed me warily down into the tunnels that form a honeycomb under the bustling streets of Paris’s 14th arrondissement, after I promised him that we would follow up the experience with a stiff drink. We pass under the entrance to the ossuary – with its somewhat unsettling inscription “Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la mort” (Stop! This is the empire of death) – and are instantly confronted by the bones of six million people. Paris’s population nearly doubled in the 17th and 18th centuries. As it did so, disposing of the dead became increasingly problematic. Burial grounds were bursting at the seams with human remains, presenting huge threats to public health. In cemeteries dotted around the city, it was not uncommon to see heaps of blackened soil studded with decomposing cadaver parts, or bones projecting from freshly turned ground. Bodies were deposited on top of one another in open pits, with row upon row of coffins exposed to sight and smell. Related: Why funerals are the new weddings | Fay Schopen By the mid-18th century, residents living near Les Innocents, the city’s oldest and largest cemetery, began to complain about the odour emanating from these overstuffed graves. The situation reached a tipping point in 1780, when rain caused a wall of the cemetery to collapse, spilling a number of rotting corpses on to neighbouring properties. In 1786, remains from cemeteries around Paris were removed and placed five stories underground in the city’s former quarries, which are now known as the Paris catacombs. Recently, there has been a global trend towards “dark tourism”. This week, Airbnb is offering two people the chance to stay overnight in the catacombs, as a way to celebrate Halloween. This is part of a growing trend. People from all over the world seek out places associated with death, whether they be ossuaries, cemeteries, anatomical collections, or other similar sites. Caitlin Doughty – author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and host of the popular YouTube series Ask a Mortician – believes the sudden surge of interest in these places speaks to our modern relationship with death. “We no longer live in an era where the dead body is laid out in the front parlour, washed, and cared for, and waked by the family,” she says. “We outsource our death to funeral homes and corporations, and that leaves people hungry for some kind of honest relationship with mortality.” Visiting places like the catacombs may help to repair our distant relationship with death, provided tourists are willing to engage with their surroundings and not just use them as an opportunity to snap a macabre shot for their Instagram accounts. No one understands the need to contextualise this experience more than the photographer and writer Paul Koudounaris whose recent book Memento Mori features photographs from more than 250 “death sites” around the world. “Time collapses when I am standing alone in a charnel house,” he tells me. “I think that is why they made such effective liminal spaces. They enforce upon me the lesson that no matter who we are and how different we seem to be, we are all part of and subject to a greater cycle – a cycle which in the end ensures that we all end up unified and largely undifferentiated.” These types of epiphanies can be life-altering for those who visit these sites, and are experiences worth having, if the opportunity arises. But getting in touch with our mortality can take a toll on historical conservation. The Capela dos Ossos in Evora, Portugal eventually received so many visitors that the humidity they generated started to erode the masonry of the walls in which the bones were placed and efforts had to be made to stabilise parts of the structure,” says Koudounaris. Many of these places were simply not constructed to hold hundreds of thousands of visitors. And while the number of catacombs, burial grounds, and ossuaries that receive this kind of traffic remains small, for those that do, it’s a challenge. One which “others will face as the interest in dark tourism grows,” Koudounaris cautions. Those who visit these sites sometimes experience life-altering epiphanies Of course, you don’t have to visit the catacombs or other similar sites to open up discussions about mortality. Megan Rosenbloom is the director of Death Salon, a series of events held around the world that bring together scholars, doctors, funeral directors, and artists in conversations about death and dying. The last one also happened to be held at a “death site”: the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, which hosts an extensive collection of anatomical specimens, wax models, and medical instruments from the 19th century. “Just as these specimens were used to teach doctors in the past, attendees of Death Salon use them as an inspiration for discussion about death today,” Rosenbloom says. “Death is something that we all experience,” she continues. “We believe that having open conversations about death is a far healthier way for a society to function.” Back down in the catacombs, Max bolts for the exit as soon as he locates it. Immediately, he is halted by a stern-looking guard, who asks to search his bag. Bewildered at this request, Max reluctantly opens his knapsack, asking why this is necessary. The guard shrugs: “People like to steal the bones as souvenirs.” A short while later, I make good on my promise, and buy him a double whiskey. |