Place Denfert-Rochereau
This area is remarkable
for three things: a) a 17th-century toll-gate b) a statue called LE LION DE
BELFORT, recalling the resistance of the town of Belfort in the war of 1870,
and c) The entrance to
the CATACOMBS. These are old gypsum mines to which, in the eighteenth century,
all the bones from the central Paris cemetery were removed.
Over a million skeletons here,
but piled up neatly by some humorous ghoul and carefully sorted; here a stack of
skulls, there a pile of thigh-bones and so on.
During the last war, some members of the Resistance
made this their headquarters. Ugh.
