Got a late start this morning -- up until after 2:00am Skyping with people back in the States -- that eight hour time difference can really put a dent in keeping in touch. Drizzled most of the day today which set the stage perfectly for my primary destination -- the Cimeterie des Innocents, now a large, cobblestoned square right in the heart of Paris.
The cemetery dates from the mid-1200's when it served as the burial ground for the nearby Eglise des Innocents. It underwent a huge expansion in the 1400's -- eventually being surrounded by ten foot tall walls and became the final resting place for the corpses of the poor, the unknown or unclaimed, those deemed insane, plague victims, prostitutes, criminals -- pretty much anyone who wasn't rich enough to pay for a burial in the "real" church graveyard or who were considered "undesirable or unfit" to be buried in the churchyard. It also served as the final "resting" place for Marie Antoinette's "below the neck" body parts (what happened to her head is another story) -- according to records, it was tossed unceremoniously into a pit with the other bodies. (They really didn't like her!)
The area today is about fifty to sixty yards square. Starting back in the 1400's, it was divided into sections, each section being turned, in an orderly fashion, into a deep pit large enough to accommodate fifteen hundred bodies -- once full they would dump lime over the bodies (to help with decomposition), toss some dirt over the top, move on to the next "section", dig a new pit, fill it with bodies, and so on. When they got back to the first section, they would dig up the bones and stack them along the wall, then start filling that pit a second time.
On a grizzly note, it's recorded that frequently (when the bodies were exhumed), the bodies had not totally decomposed and the gravediggers would take the remnants and boil it down for soap and candles -- a lovely image! It's estimated that over two million people were buried in that one square until 1780 when Louis XVI ordered the place closed down because of "sanitary" concerns.
All that remains today is a fountain that originally stood against one of the outside walls -- they moved it and put it on a pedestal in the center of the square. Today, the square is surrounded by a number of restaurants, cafes and brasseries and tens of thousands of tourists and Parisians eat lunch and stroll through the square totally unaware of previous goings-on beneath their feet. As you can imagine, it's been rumored that many a traveler crossing the square alone, late at night has has felt an "other-worldly" presence.
Then it was off to my next stop, the Hotel de Ville, Paris's town hall and sometimes art museum. It's a impressive, ornate building overlooking a huge cobble-stoned square and a beautiful, vintage-looking, children's carousel. The area is supposedly one of the earliest inhabitated parts of Paris, lying adjacent to the Seine and has seen it's share of history. A great place for people watching!
Am heading to Bruges, Belgium next week for a couple of days and spent much of the afternoon making hotel reservations and figuring out how to buy train tickets online (ticketless) -- turned-out to be not that hard -- I hope (the real test will be to see if they actually let us board the train).
