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Has anyone ever been to the Catacombs of Paris, or anything similar?

I so want to go. That would be my dream vacation. I've never had the opportunity to visit any catacombs or an ossuary. The pics of these places are awesome.

Tags: catacombs, crypt, death, macabre, ossuary, skeleton, skull, tomb

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Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on June 19, 2009 at 8:41am

I saw that maybe a few months ago, but I was disappointed with it. I didn't hate it, but I was not overwhelmingly impressed. A slightly better movie along those same lines was The Cave, though still not out of this world. There are a lot of movies with this same premise: a person or persons trapped somewhere or isloated from society (outside help)with something or someone after them. Think Alien and its sequals, The Deep, Tourista, Hostel, The Thing, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, etc. That can be interesting and sometimes suspenseful, but rarely unique.

Permalink Reply by Leslee Love on June 19, 2009 at 9:08am

Yea, it wasn't really the being isolated and frightened that I enjoyed(that has been done so much)...but how she was all like fuck it and killed them all anyway for scaring the ever-lovin shit out of her..!!! I would probably have done the same.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on June 19, 2009 at 9:19am

Yeah, that part was unexepected. I didn't see that coming at first. The only other movie I can recall ever seeing where it was all "just a joke" was April Fool's Day from the 1980s.

Permalink Reply by Klaus Motan on August 2, 2009 at 1:58pm

I´m a little bit confused here - you don´t have any skull & bone chambers over there, right ?

So, in Europe, you can literally find them in almost every town with a medieval history, even in the smallest ones, they were very popular in earlier times and some are till today (a matter of space on graveyards, when there were various pandemics, especially "the pest").

But I guess, much more popular than the catacombs of Paris are the ones in Rome, although I can hardly imagine, what´s so spectacular in a big heap of bones, being stored in an underground cavern - there are lots of much more interesting sites to visit in Europe, even for people with a taste for morbidity...

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on August 2, 2009 at 6:57pm

...you don´t have any skull & bone chambers over there, right...

None to my knowledge.

...what´s so spectacular in a big heap of bones, being stored in an underground cavern...

To me, I love that kind of stuff. I'd love to go there.

Permalink Reply by Louis on September 20, 2009 at 10:23pm

If you ever go to Paris, or anywhere in continental Europe for that matter, don't go during the Summer. It's full of fat, sweaty Americans who move about like an amorphous of blob of ignorance, unjustified superiority, and McDonald's. In any case, during the Summer almost everyone starts speaking English and you may as well have stayed home. Go in the Autumn, otherwise all of Paris is just one big tourist trap.

Anywhoozle, I visited the catacombs in the Vatican and Florence. It's very sublime. Just the thought that hundreds of years ago someone was interred there and hasn't been moved since is a bit weird. To know that something so close to where I was has not been touched in that long gives me the jibblies -- and makes me want to see if it's soup yet.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on September 20, 2009 at 10:33pm

Really old things--buildings, books, whatever, all fills me with a feeling that is hard to describe. It is a little sadness, a little nostalgia, and a little awe that it (whatever it is) is still here, even after hundreds or thousands of years. And it is kind of cool too. But when it comes to human remains, it just seems odd to me. These were people much like myself. They had faces, and names, and desired things from life, and now all that remains are bones. I wonder, who were these people? Were they good people, or bad people? The transitoriness of it all makes me a little sad.

Permalink Reply by Louis on September 20, 2009 at 10:39pm

I had the same feeling when I found a penny that was older than I was.

I had to ask myself, how many hands had that coin passed through. How many more things had it endured than I?

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on September 20, 2009 at 10:44pm

Are you being serious, or sarcastic?

If serious, then I'm going to say, yeah, I understand. It is funny to see a penny that it like 50 years old or something, and still in circulation. (50 is older than me, btw)

Permalink Reply by Klaus Motan on November 1, 2009 at 4:17pm

...guess, you definitely have to visit Vienna - lots of weird attractions there, as the "Kapuzinergruft", the "Narrenturm" (a collection of lots of human monstrosities, founded by an Habsburgian monarch), lots of bone-chambers and catacombs, guided underground and mystery tours as well as the common touristic attractions...oh, and as Vienna was founded by the Romans, we got lots of very old, creepy and ancient places over there...