The City of Darkness

My feet tapped impatiently on a subway ride that seemed to take an eternity, even though the system appeared flawless compared to New York's MTA. I was visiting Paris, but of course I wasn't on my way to the Eiffel Tower. I was about to embark on an subterranean adventure like no other; 186 miles of tunnels underneath the city, half-flooded, patrolled, and a true maze of passages... I couldn't wait!

A vague location was ascertained regarding an entrance into the underground network, and after we disembarked from the metro it took roughly 45 minutes of searching until we found it. The way down was essentially a small hole that barely accepted my shoulders and bulky camera bag, surrounded by piles of garbage, assumedly from explorers keeping their empty water bottles and other trash out of the tunnels. We squeezed inside, and were confronted with a low passage with a few inches of water collecting in the center. I figured I would stay dry for as long as possible, so I placed my hands on the walls, my feet along the sides of the tunnel, and while stooping down low, I "duck-walked" for quite some time into the dripping darkness. I later learned this horribly awkward process was called "Banga" by the locals, in reference to an odd product commercial where a boy performs the same movement to avoid being eaten by imaginary crocodiles.

The map I had didn't contain many references to above-ground landmarks, so our entry point was a bit fuzzy. We were also pretty excited to explore the place. After twenty minutes, my map, the item I was relying on so greatly, seemed almost worthless as we dead-ended again and again inside a maze of rough-cut caverns. It wasn't long until I inadvertently ended up in a chilly knee-high pool of water, although I was somewhat grateful from being saved from my mental obligation of Banga-ing my way around. Suddenly, in the darkness of the caves, we saw a light. It was from two explorers, trying to find Rue de la Tombe Issorie, a main corridor that ran through the heart of this network. They were friendly and a bit new to the system as well, but with our combined brain-power, maps, and some guessing, we managed to locate the the passage, and proceeded as a team.

Rue de la Tombe Issorie is well-traveled, and was completely coated with graffiti; mostly arrows of various colors and shapes, probably used by explorers to help them find their way out. Arriving at an intersection on tunnel, one can find an arrow of every color imaginable. This central road actually forms part of the main ossuary, which is now part of the official catacombs museum and securely walled off from the areas we were in.

There are other ossuaries in these quarry tunnels however, and I was determined to find one located about a mile and a half away, underneath Cimetière du Montparnasse. So we slogged through the tunnels, stopping only to check our maps at the junctions to ensure we were on the correct path. Luckily, most of the passages here did not require stooping down, and some crossroads and street names from above were etched into the walls from the ancient hands of the cartographers of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was far from dry however; some sections of tunnel were flooded just above waist-deep, and we needed to hold our backpacks up over our heads while wading through. I was glad it didn't get any deeper.

We eventually came upon an intersection with a tunnel curving out on both sides, which formed a large rotunda. Someone had tucked a skull into a niche in the wall, and I knew we had reached the ossuary under Montparnasse Cemetery...