The Catacombs of Paris

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Photo credit: dharmabum90.
Imagine if the city you lived in had vast burial catacombs beneath it that had existed since the 1700s, and were filled with secret passages, ancient skeletons — and a thriving culture of underground events, street artists and situationalist happenings. Most large cities have caverns beneath, but the city I’m talking about with its unique subterranean mausoleum is beautiful Paris. The Catacombs of Paris are legendary (like once being home to an illegitimate movie theater), and on a tangent last night I dug up tons of media about this complex culture, and it’s wonderfully macabre space.
There are *thousands* of images in Flickr.
Also, there’s the Paris underground (literally) street culture book Paname Sans Dessus, Dessous! I found a gold mine of images from the book here.
The tagging culture has been documented here.
There are some incredible videos shot of the catacombs to be found on (koff) YouTube; the first one shows the insane amount of decoration made from human bones. I’ve also embedded a couple clips from the graffiti documentary, Dead Space.


Skulls and bones, so artfully arranged (the comments talk about finding the entrances, etc):

Dead Space trailer:

Dead Space: five minutes with a catacomb tagger:

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