Views of Paris from Tour Montparnasse

Today we went on a rather uninspiring walk through parts of Saint Germain and Montparnasse.  A lot of the Paris City Walks cards point out local shops and businesses as "attractions".  Usually we pop in and see what the fuss is about, especially if it's a bakery or patisserie.  But...for several weeks in August, many stores have their "fermeture annuelle" (annual closure) for vacation.  So most of Paris seems to be closed for the moment.  (We are lucky that on our street, Rue Montorgueil, most of the bakeries, fromageries, produce stands, and grocery stores remain open.)  Anyway, the fermetures annuelles are making some of our walks pretty boring!

However, all the tourist attractions are up and running.  Our walk ended at the Tour Montparnasse, the 59-floor skyscraper near the Montparnasse train station.

"Visite Panoramique"...okay, why not?

The ear-popping elevator ride took us first to the 56th floor to the indoor observation area.  From that height, the Montparnasse cemetery looks like a small city.

When viewing it from above, you can really appreciate the enormous size of the Louvre museum.  If you have really good eyes, you can make out Sacré-Coeur in the upper left corner of the photo, but the white church really disappears among the other white buildings so it can be hard to see.

The Hôtel des Invalides is pretty easy to make out from up here -- the shiny gold dome is unmistakable.

We then walked up a few flights to the outdoor deck on the 59th floor, where you can get a great 360-degree panoramic view of the whole city.

The mismatched towers make the church of Saint-Sulpice easy to spot.  In the upper left is the Église Saint Eustache (near our apartment).  In the upper right are the highly visible red, white, and blue colors of the Pompidou Center.

The Jardin du Luxembourg sticks out like a green oasis amidst all the beige and gray buildings.  Just behind it and to the left you can see Notre Dame.

Last but not least is the Eiffel Tower.  Behind it is La Défense, the business district.  The green stretch in front of the tower is the Champs de Mars, leading to the École Militaire.

The Catacombs of Paris

Yesterday an American couple we met had warned us that the Catacombs were difficult to find.  They shouldn't have bothered...as soon as we emerged from the Metro we could see the queue stretching all the way around the block.  After a long wait, we reached the entrance and began the steep descent down the winding staircase.

130 steps to go down, 83 steps to come back up

The primary reason for the creation of the catacombs was public sanitation.  The long-held practice of burying people in large trenches without coffins resulted in rapid decay and contamination of well water.  By the late 1700's, especially in the very crowded Saints Innocents Cemetery near Les Halles, something had to be done to prevent the spread of contagion and disease.  The solution was to remove the existing bones to an ossuary and create new cemeteries outside the city limits.  The site chosen for the ossuary was an abandoned quarry in the south of the city.

The initial caverns we walked through contained sculptures in the rock that were created by miners before the site became the catacombs.

There are 2 kms of dimly lit passageways to walk through -- not for the faint of heart.

When you reach the ossuary, you are warned by the words "Stop! This is the empire of death".

Piles and piles of bones line the passageways.  All are labeled with the cemetery and date of removal to the catacombs (the process of removal took place over many years during the 18th and 19th centuries).  Some were stacked in formation.

Other stacks seemed less orderly.

After a while, it gets a little eerie.  Your mind can play tricks on you in the dim light.

Overall the estimate is that the Parisian Catacombs contain the remains of over 6 million people.

To leave the catacombs you must climb another long spiral staircase, requiring some endurance.  There is no elevator, so it is best to be in good shape for climbing the 83 steps to the exit.  The city of Paris wants to ensure that the population of the catacombs doesn't reach 6 million and one, so just in case:

I guess we didn't get our fill of skulls and bones because we headed to a Mexican restaurant called "Rice and Beans" for a taco dinner.  The restaurant has a very Día de los Muertos vibe.

The food was excellent and everyone had a good time.

Montparnasse and Pasteur Museum

Having worked with viruses and bacteria in a lab setting for the past few years, my sister Margaret was interested in taking a tour of the Louis Pasteur Museum.  So she and I took the Metro to the Montparnasse area to do a little exploring and check out the Institut Pasteur.

We enjoyed the stroll along the Boulevard Edgar Quinet.  It was pleasant and far from the tourist crowds.

We took a detour through the Cimetière du Montparnasse, with its ornate tombs.

In many cases, the decoration on the tombs contains the work of a famous artist.

Painter Gustav Jundt's tomb, with bronze sculpture by Bartholdi (whose tomb is also in Montparnasse)

Sculpture by artist Niki de Saint-Phalle. The inscription reads "To my friend Jean-Jacques, a bird who flew away too soon"

There are also some famous people for whom Montparnasse Cemetery is the final resting place.  Signs posted throughout the cemetery guide you to their tombs.

Charles Pigeon (inventor of a non-exploding gasoline lamp) wanted to be depicted in bed

Tomb of Porfirio Diaz, controversial Mexican president. 

The headstone of existentialists Sartre and de Beauvoir is covered in kisses and love notes.

As we exited the cemetery we had an excellent view of the Tour Montparnasse.  A 689-foot office building, it towers over the rest of Paris.  When it was built in the early 1970's it was criticized for being too big and aesthetically out of sync with the rest of the Parisian landscape. But I'm sure it offers great views of the city.

After a few more blocks, we arrived at the Musée Pasteur which is located in the heart of the campus of the Institut Pasteur.

Exterior of one of the Institut Pasteur's research buildings

The Musée Pasteur, and bust of Louis Pasteur

The Institut is France's leading medical research center and there were many people walking around wearing labcoats.  Unknowingly, we walked past the security guard toward the museum and were called back to show our identification and obtain some very official-looking name badges.

  
Tours are given on the hour beginning at 2pm.  The museum is located in Pasteur's former house and contains his medical instruments, notes, and some ongoing experiments.  Additionally, his sitting rooms, bedroom, dining room, etc have been left furnished as they were in his lifetime.  It was unfortunate that they did not allow photographs, especially when we reached the final area of the tour -- Pasteur's tomb.  It is one of the most ornate memorials I've ever seen; I found this link to a photo, but it doesn't really do justice to all the gilding and decorative symbolism.

Paris has so many museums and it is easy to overlook some of the lesser-known ones so I am very glad that this was on Margaret's must-see list, and that I got a chance to visit it while I'm here in Paris.