Catacombs

Aaurgh! It was really hard to get a good picture, since the lighting down there was practically nonexistent, probably to add to the creepy factor. Skulls! Lots of femurs! They literally were just piled up on each other, rows and rows of them. It was amazing.

I cheated here and used flash since everyone else was. Check that out! It went on for literally half a mile. If I had to guess, I would say there were a million bones.

More bones.

Rows and rows of bones.

Here was a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

They sometimes had inscriptions up telling us where exactly the bones were delivered from. I don’t understand the toilet, though. These bones were dug up in May, 1787.

Here are some from April 1786. I wonder whose job it was to arrange all of the bones so nicely. What did they do with the little bones like the vertebrae or the fingers? Just throw them on the pile?

Check out the crazy painted skull in the middle.

Here, the skulls were arranged in a pattern.

The workers must have been bored.

This is a poorly-lit shot of the stairs going back up. It was a tiny, tiny, winding staircase that felt like many more than 83. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic.

On the way out, some random bones were just hanging around on a filing cabinet.