2753) Spring Salon - The Paris Catacombs, France: La Poste France has brought out a postage stamp of €1.16 (Euro) depicting the famous Catacombs of Paris: Date of Stamp issue: 27.03.2023:
About Spring Salon Paris - The Paris Catacombs:
The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries in Paris, France, which hold the remains of more than six million people in a small part of a tunnel network built to consolidate Paris's ancient stone quarries.
Extending South from the "Barrière d'Enfer" ("Gate of Hell" - former City Gate), this ossuary was created as part of the effort to eliminate the city's overflowing cemeteries.
Preparation work began shortly after a 1774 series of basement wall collapses around the Holy Innocents' Cemetery added a sense of urgency to the cemetery-eliminating measure, and from 1786, nightly processions of covered wagons transferred remains from most of Paris's cemeteries to a mine shaft opened near the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire.
The ossuary remained largely forgotten until it became a novelty-place for concerts and other private events in the early 19th century.
After further renovations and the construction of accesses around Place Denfert-Rochereau, it was opened to public visitation from 1874.
Since 2013, the Catacombs have numbered among the fourteen City of Paris Museums managed by Paris Musées. They are part of the Paris Musées network, which brings together the 14 museums and sites of the City of Paris.
Although the ossuary comprises only a small section of the underground mines of Paris, Parisians currently often refer to the entire tunnel network as the catacombs.
They are an object of fascination and legends in which the underground joins the unconscious and builds a plural, changing mythology, mixed with stories, whispered names, real and imaginary facts to which literature, films and, more recently, social media posts continued to bring life.
Their history has its roots in the geological particularities of a Parisian subsoil rich in sedimentary deposits used for centuries in the construction of buildings and monuments in the capital.
But this story took shape especially at the end of the 18th century under the pressure of two concomitant problems -
- the repeated collapse of underground galleries which threatened the dwellings of the capital and led in 1777 to the creation of the General Inspectorate of Quarries (IGCQ), and
- the overcrowding of communal cemeteries that centuries of use have filled to overflowing. So much so that in 1780 the wall of a cellar adjoining the large cemetery of the Innocents, near the contemporary Halles, collapsed and let heaps of corpses and bones spill out.
The decision was then taken to transfer these human remains to the galleries of former quarries specially fitted out under the plain of Montrouge, outside the walls of the then city and near the current Place Denfert-Rochereau.
From 1785, several campaigns to transfer bones from municipal cemeteries were organised in the underground passages, which were given the evocative name of “catacombs”, in reference to the catacombs of Rome.
The bones of more than six million Parisians were moved, including those of Rabelais, La Fontaine, Molière, Mansart, Lully, Robespierre, Danton and Lavoisier.
From 1809, the second Inspector General of Quarries, Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury, opened the premises to the public and fitted out the galleries by alternating rows of bones with elements of ancient architecture and funerary decoration.
Doric pillars, altars and literary inscriptions line the route of the largest underground ossuary in the world, which quickly attracts a public captivated by the romantic-macabre decor.
Nadar, Balzac, Dumas and many other artists then seized on the myth, sometimes maintaining confusion with the immense network of galleries of which the catacombs are in fact only a tiny part. The success is undeniable.
The Paris Catacombs, which can be accessed through one of the two pavilions built by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux in 1787, now welcome nearly 600,000 visitors a year.
The Stamp:
Technical details:
Issue Date: 27.03.2023
Process: Intaglio
Size: 52.00 mm x 31.77 mm
Values: €1.16
Links to other posts in Metropolis Tiffany Art Coin Series:
Links to other Coins in the Cyborg Revolution Coin Series" issued in this Series:
Links:
Most Haunted Places Coin Series:
Links to other posts on Metropolis Tiffany Art Coin Series:
The 7-Summits Silver Coin Series:
For other interesting posts on honouring the work done for the blind/visually impaired persons please visit the following links:
1) A tour of Pune's Blind School and interaction with the students - a short story
2) A two-Rupee coin issued by the Indian Mints honouring Louis Braille on the occasion of his 200th Birth Anniversary in 2009 and a brief report on the Braille system
6) Honouring Louis Braille on the Bicentenary of his birth in 2009
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