The Catacombs and the Department of Mines and Queries

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Etienne de Turie is put in charge of the Department of Mines and Queries under the Napoleonic regime. One of the first things he's tasked with is clean up those catacombs and open them up to do something with them. He does it in four months what and so him and his staff do this work while engineers and city workers pile up all the bones. The catacombs are visited by like hundreds and then thousands of people between then and when they're closed down in 1830.

Let’s get spooky. Venture below Parisian streets and into the catacombs: hundreds of miles of subterranean tunnels housing millions of human skeletons, some fashioned into sculpture. Alie tracked down Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey – author of “Making Space for the Dead,” professor of French history and one of the world’s foremost experts on this eerie place. We chat about everything from miasmas to sinkholes, boggling cemetery history, smells, skulls, hidden chambers, (very) underground parties, and how we view our bodies post-life. Also: Alie takes a trip to see them herself.

Dr. Legacy’s book, “Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830” on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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A donation went to: Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas