If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 419

The Gallery in the Catacombs, Paris, France, ca. early 1900s

This vintage postcard numbered 625 has an L.L. photograph of the Gallery in the Catacombs, Paris, France has a divided back and dates from the early 1900s.  LL or L.L. photographs appear on many vintage postcards from France and have been mentioned previously in this blog. The French printer and photograph editing company Léon & Lévy (LL) was founded in 1864 in Paris and specialized mostly in stereoscopic views of European, Asian, African and American scenes.  Stereoscopic cards had two images and required a reading device to produce a 3-D effect unlike this card that has only one image.  LL was one of the most important editors of postcards in France.  The trademark LL can be seen following the title of the card at the lower left.   
 
What is today called the catacombs is part of a network of tunnels originally built as ancient limestone mines in Paris.  The very old mines were on the Left Bank that was not part of the city proper until a much later time.  When the city’s cemeteries were overflowing an ossuary, or special place dedicated to the final resting place of human skeletal remains, was created in part of the tunnels.  Beginning in 1786 wagons transferred remains from most of the Paris cemeteries to a mine shaft near Rue de la Tombe-Iossoire.  It took 2 years to complete the work moving the remains from the cemeteries to the catacombs. 

The mostly forgotten the tunnels became a novelty place for concerts and private events in the early 19th century.  Renovations and the construction of accesses near Place Denfert-Rochereau made it possible to open the area for public visits beginning in 1874.  The ossuary, housing the remains of more than 6 million people, is in a small part of the tunnel network. 

Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury, the director of the Paris Mine Inspection Service in the 1800s, transformed the caverns into a mausoleum that could be visited by the public. Today the City of Paris Museums manages the catacombs.  In the Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp there is a wall constructed of bones and skulls made into a design.  Because so much mining, legal and illegal, was done and the city expanded it caused some buildings to collapse.  Masonry inspections led to the reinforcement of the streets above the mine tunnels.   In addition to the ossuary there is a room with displays of the various minerals found under Paris.  Thury also added monumental tablets and archways with inscriptions and comments about the ossuary.  For safety reasons the part of the tunnels that can be visited are walled off from the rest of the tunnel system.

For more information, see:

https://en.wikipedial.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary