Paris Isn’t a City of Love. It’s a City of Death.
By: Steve Slack
Tags: Travel, Paris, Places, Death, Cities

Promenading the banks of the Seine, taking in the romance of the city vista I came to realise, as I stood in a pile of dog mess, that Paris is not a romantic city at all.

Elegant, yes. Handsome, of course.

But it’s not in the least bit adoring or amorous. Many things we might perceive as charming are, in fact, providing a thin veil over a city that has darkness at its heart.

Paris is a city obsessed with death. Look closely and it’s noticeably a macabre place. Its boulevards and alleys surround us with reminders of those who have already passed. And, in turn, it reminds us of our own mortality.

In this spirit I suggest you abandon your ideas of the city of tenderness, passion or even of love. Instead, I invite you to see Paris as the city of peril, of guts and of gore.

Our story starts where most bodies end up — in the ground. Sometimes referred to as the world’s largest grave, the network of underground tunnels that make up the Paris catacombs contain the remains of over 6 million of the city’s inhabitants. And yes, Paris hasn’t simply left them to rest in peace — it has opened them up as a tourist attraction for you to wander around. Pay your fee, enter the tunnels, and gawp at the dead as their vacant skulls peer back at you. Perhaps the creepiest grave down here is that of Philibert Aspairt, once a doorkeeper at a military hospital during the French Revolution, who went missing when wandering alone in the catacombs in 1793. He is buried in the exact spot where his body was found 11 years later, identified by the hospital keychain, still dangling from his belt.

Or take a wander through the city’s famous Pere Lachaise cemetery. Although nobody really knows how many people are interred here, some claim there are as many as a million dead bodies in this one park. Many of the tombs aren’t underground but are in mini-temples or family mausoleums, making the place more unnerving for those who visit from places where bodies are more normally buried deep below. Here they hang around you. If you visit at twilight when the long shadows are at their most sinister, not only will be at its creepiest, but you’ll also perhaps have a better chance of finding those celebrated graves of previous Parisians. Here’s Oscar Wilde, here’s Jim Morrison and here’s Edith Piaf.

This could be Piaf herself. An expensive looking lady of a certain age swaggering into an expensive looking bistro on the edge of the Marais. She ignores her chauffer’s cap doff as she stares straight ahead at the maître d’hôtel, who holds the door and welcomes her with the familiarity he offers to only his most special guests. That enigmatic French ideal — the athletic man in his prime who will gladly satisfy the needs of a wealthy older woman in exchange for patronage, modest adoration and a few thousands Euros a month on retainer. At first sight she seems all wealthy elegance and genial grace, yet the casual tap of the maître’s pelvis as she enters betrays what happens between these two. Within a moment, while her mind might well be rehearsing, or even planning, their passions, she is ordering the engorged liver of a force-fed goose, formed into a pâté for her pleasure. And a slither of veal from a calf that was forcibly locked in a box for most of its life. Oh Paris, you tease — the veneer of private cars, romance and fine dining is little more than a gigolo serving ethically questionable foie gras to a sexually frustrated rich old lady.

Wander a few streets on and what is this curio? A former palace, lovingly restored to a model of architectural charm. You might think that a museum dedicated to hunting would be in rather bad taste today. And in some ways you’d be right. But somehow, the Musee de la chasse et de la nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature) managed not only to receive a major refit a few years ago, but it seems to be going from strength to strength.

Step inside and you won’t find stuffy aristocrats, peering at weaponry and hunting paraphernalia. Instead, you’ll find youngsters, urbanites and rural folk alike, tourists and locals, people with an inquisitive curiosity about history, landscape and art.

The museum claims to be a museum of ‘responsible livestock management’. Whether the word responsible arouses the cynic in you or not, this museum might actually hold your attention for longer than you expected. It explores something of the dynamic between hunters and the hunted. While the displays are, admittedly, filled with plenty of stuffed dead specimens of things that once lived, it is the birds and the beasts who seem to have the last say. Artists have riffed on the idea of hunting and death, giving the specimens a new sense of life that goes beyond a simple stuffing. By the end of the visit you’ll see that the birds and the beasts have managed to regain control of the museum. The cabinets of guns are topped with lions and leopards, sat proudly above the weapons, pawing at them, reclaiming power in their relationship with we humans. So it’s a museum of death, yes. And also of life.

There are moments in Paris where the death of just one person is enough to sustain plenty of pomp on aggrandised scales. The body of an unknown soldier from the First World War is buried under the Arc de Triomphe and his grave bears an eternal flame that burns 24/7 in memory of the war dead. A fitting tribute. But even this poignant place of memory is challenged by essentially being in the centre of France’s biggest roundabout.

And at the centre of the gloriously over-the-top complex at Les Invalides you’ll find Napoleon Bonaparte’s body, housed in a sarcophagus that contains six coffins, one inside the other.

He isn’t the only one there. After seeing his magnificent tomb, visitors are encouraged to gawp at all the other generals and military bigwigs interred there. The complex around his tomb was originally built as housing for war veterans — and you can spot some elderly soldiers there today, still holding on, reminding us that death awaits us all sooner or later.

Perhaps there’s time for a moment of light relief in all this doom. If you want to see something more tragic than the death of Diana Princess of Wales, stop for a moment at the Pont de l’Alma where you can witness people born well after 1997 openly weeping for a woman they never met. The bridge above the tunnel where the now famous high-speed car accident happened has become an eerie shrine to Lady Di. Romantic teenagers from around the world come to affix padlocks to the fence, much to the irritation of the Parisian authorities. Like the cold hand of death itself, the bolt cutter is despatched to remove them one by one.

Or maybe you’d prefer a daytrip to Palace of Versailles. Although it’s not technically in Paris, it’s part of many of the romantic tourists’ itineraries, and is usually well-placed in a visit, to get away from the endless creperies and the canine faeces on the city’s streets.

But today, party palace this is not. So mournful for the passing of monarchy is this place, that a clock stands still with its hands stopped at the time of Louis XIV’s death. It’s as if the place has been preserved in aspic, locked in a lifeless void.

Visit here and you might never think that the revolution happened.

Don’t worry. Once the interpretation kicks in, there’s# guts aplenty. In January 1757 Robert-François Damiens, we are told, attempted to kill King Louis XV as he was getting into his carriage. His weapon of choice was a lowly pen-knife, with which he only managed to inflict a minor wound on the monarch. Damiens, however, was tortured with red-hot pincers, sulphur, molten wax and lead, and boiling oil. He was publically hung, drawn and quartered and then finally burned.

‘Hurrah’, shout the tourists, ‘how delightfully revolting!’ now uplifted by a day out at a fancy castle, somehow forgetting that the excessive pomp and frippery of the palace around them is exactly what the revolutionaries were so heavily opposed to. It’s why they overthrew and, ultimately, killed their royal family.

Contrary to the popular image of the bloody guillotine, beheading was never that popular a means of execution in France. The last death by decapitation in Paris was in 1765 and throughout the 1800s hanging was the preferred means of capital punishment instead. But at the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville (the square in front of city hall) you can see the site where people were beheaded, hung and burned for centuries. Sadly there’s little there to remind us of the macabre history of this part of town, but if you visit on Bastille Day (14 July) there are plenty of soldiers out on display, marching in their finest. Close your eyes and as the drums roll, you can imagine the glint of guillotine blade.

Despite the blood and the butchery, one cannot simply pretend that Paris is uncultured. Think of this city and of its art and you will, of course think of the marathon visitor experience that is the Musée du Louvre. While getting into and then navigating your way around the world’s largest museum may leave you feeling like you’d like to murder someone, you can at least escape the gore momentarily here. The key to not causing more deaths in the Louvre is to choose just a few rooms to see, rather than trying to ‘do’ the whole lot. But, of course, this is Paris, so to feed your now insatiable death-lust be sure to head to the Egyptian galleries to see mummies whose brains were pulled out through their noses before mummification. Children are also famously bored by art and delighted by gore. There’s something charming about seeing them trotting along on the family Lion Hunt Tour of the galleries. Off to see bodies being maimed by ferocious killing beasts. Bless their cotton, blood-soaked socks.

For even more culture, bring the children along to The Grand halle de la Vilette arts centre. Perhaps they can take in an exhibition there or see some open-air cinema. But as the dusk begins to settle in, do be sure to remind them that this is the site where Paris’ huge abattoirs stood. Nineteenth-century writers tell of how public the gory slaughterhouses once were. Indeed, this area was once known as la cité du sang (city of blood) and the streets were reported to have run red. It’s almost enough to put you off your steak tartare.

Every story in Paris has a sad ending. The story of Madame Curie’s life is told in the Musée Curie in the very place where she and her husband discovered polonium and radium and first created artificial radioactivity. Their scientific achievements led to the development of X-ray machines and the treatments we use today to combat cancer, so this really is a place to be celebrated. But exposure to the damaging materials she experimented with did her no good and in 1934 led to her death at the age of just 66. There’s no need for a Geiger counter when you visit today, though. Her office was decontaminated of any radiation in 1981. You hope.

My story doesn’t have a sad ending, though. Indeed, seeing the city in a new way has made me appreciate it a little better. It’s a city that might look beautiful, some even say romantic, on the surface, but which definitely has a much darker undertone than one may have expected.

Forget the aspirational glamour of the fashion houses — they’re propped up by models with eating disorders.

Forget the cute statuettes of the Eiffel Tower — they’re sold to you by asylum seekers who the French state likes to bundle up and send home.

Forget the romantic river cruises with hearts printed on the menus — the food is made hours ahead, before you set sail.

Forget the inexpensive public transport where phones work underground — it reeks of urine.

Forget the natural charm of the glittering matriarch gliding like a swan between her car and her reassuringly expensive, meaty main course — she’s kitted out in real fur and leaves her dog’s faeces on the pavement for us to step in.

Forget the city of romance. It’s a sham. Paris is a city of misery and of death.

Some parts of this piece started life as a travel article on Northern Soul in 2017.