Paris main visit page 2

Introduction

Musee Bourdelle
Start a walk

Cemetery Montparnasse and walk

Catacombs and walk

Still walking

Vanves fleamarket

Parc Montsouris

Paris-14th arr -The Catacombs and still further walking 

Return place Denfert Rochereau. It owns its celebrity to the statue of the “Lion de Belfort”, bronze reduction of the statue Bartholdi sculpted in the rock at Belfort in the Vosges (1880) in souvenir of the heroic resistance of general Denfert-Rochereau and his soldiers. On this place, at no.1 you find the famous “Catacombes”. They from the end of the 18th century! The Paris subsoil being in the course of centuries exploited for construction materials and gyps quarries, it resulted that after a few centuries the Paris subsoil counted 160 km of galleries. A real Swiss gruyere cheese! At the same time, since the cemeteries were overflowed with bodies and corpses. Stench, horrible odours, accidents and diverse nuisances pushed the Parisians to claim the moving of the biggest cemetery of them all, “cimetiere des Innocents”. Voltaire was the leader of that campaign and in 1780, the king prohibited any further burial in that cemetery. In 1785 he ordered the sanitation of the place by moving all  bones to the quarries of Tombe Issoire. The operation was stretched from 1785 to 1914. An evaluation of the number of skeletons stored in the catacombs is about 5 to 6 million!!
Today the catacombs only occupy 65 km of galleries in a space of 11 hectares.
Take a torch, and perferably someone to hold your hand , but you have been warned by the inscription on the lintel of the door to the ossuary, :" Arrete, ici c'est l'empire de la mort" (Stop, here begins empire of death).
Descend, coming from Denfert-Rochereau, the avenue du General Leclerc, on the left sidewalk. When a big iron wrought gate will announce  "Villa Adrienne" enter the alley. You could imagine you’re in Chelsea, London.  Large open garden in the middle and a few brick houses around, two or three stories high. Most of them disappear under the ivy, with little savage gardens! Pass quickly by the concierge's window, she is sometimes very war-like! Better she doesn't see you. 
Return to rue du general Leclerc and return direction place Denfert. At the other side of the street take the rue Daguerre, the best-known market-street of the 14th arr. The looks have changed since a few years, the street was renovated, not always for the best (sidewalks disappeared). But is still very lively and sympathetic. Framers, different kind of craftsmen still work in the street.  Calder had his first workshop at no.22 (now Hotel Le Lionceau) and at no.63 a craftsmen village assembles printers, decorators, architects, graphists, cabinet-makers.
Make a right at the rue Fermat and walk into the rue Froidevaux. Bordering the cemetery of Montparnasse, it has numerous courtyards and ateliers and large bourgeois buildings.

Bibliography  

--Vie et histoire des arrondissements de Paris, ed.Hervas (1985-1988--Nouvelle Histoire de Paris,  ed.Hachette--Le Pieton de Paris, by L.P.Fargue, ed.Gallimard 1997--Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris, by A.Fierro, ed.Laffont, 1996--Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris, by J.Hillairet, ed.Minuit --Guide du Routard 1998-1999 (Ed.Hachette)--Paris, 2000 d'histoire, by J.Favier, ed.Fayard 1997--Naissance de Paris, by M.Fleury, ed.Imprimerie Nationale 1997—Guide des cimetieres de Paris, by Marcel Le Clere, Hachette 1990