Right now, it’s understandable if you’re developing cabin fever. Many of us will be on lockdown and even if you aren’t, leaving the house isn’t a good idea at the moment. As such, streaming video is snowballing in popularity, as are video games. But if you want to widen your horizons a little, why not check out this virtual tour of the Paris Catacombs?
If you’re not familiar with the catacombs, trust me, they kick ass. Created in the 18th century after the Paris cemeteries began overflowing with corpses, plans were made to reuse the city’s vast underground quarries as an ossuary. But, being French, they did it in style. What lies there now is a tangled labyrinth of super-spooky passages lined with human skulls and femurs, many of which are arranged into intricate patterns. I visited in person a few years ago, and there’s no place like it on Earth.
The scenery is so striking that it’s popped up in numerous movies and games over the years. 2007’s Catacombs saw a young American tourist becoming lost in the maze of tunnels as she escaped a Satanic serial killer, and it also showed up in 2014’s As Above, So Below, a horror film about archaeologists exploring the Catacombs that can boast being shot on location. Gamers will also be familiar with it, as it’s been seen in all-time classic Deus Ex and more recently was the location of the resistance base in Wolfenstein: Youngblood.
I’m not going to pretend that this virtual tour is a patch on actually visiting the place, but let’s face it, it’s not like you can just pop over to Paris and check them out in person right now. Heck, even Parisians can’t get in there at the moment. And who knows, maybe we should all staring boning up on alternative methods of corpse disposal?
