Informative Speech On The Catacombs

I. Intro: We surveyed most of you, asking what first came to mind about the city of Paris. The most common given responses were: the Eiffel Tower, romance, and light. While these things may be true, there is a darker secret hiding under the “City of Light”; the empire of the dead. We plan to put Paris into your nightmares rather than your dreams with the history of the Catacombs, scary myths and legends about the underground labyrinth, and the extent of its existence today.

II. Body Paragraph 1: History/Creation

Transition: Come no further! You are entering the Empire of the Dead.

a. This sign is displayed at the entrance to the Ossuary, a burial room located deep in the catacombs. The catacombs are home to nearly seven million corpses,

It wasn’t until the French Revolution began in 1789 that people began to be buried in the catacombs directly after death. Some notable figures buried during the French Revolution were Robespierre, the drive behind the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and Radical Jean-Paul Marat. As stated in The Catacombs: Official Website, the catacombs were used to store bodies up until 1859, when the last set of official remains was placed in the catacombs. During the eighty years the catacombs were used as a burial vault, the bodies were grouped in corridors and rooms in many different fashions. According to Natasha Geiling, the skeletons are arranged in vertical stacks against the tunnel wall, in patterns of religious images such as crosses, and even large

Callixtus is a huge catacomb complex, created in Rome. It was used at the height of Christianity, and lays host to a large number of Christians, sixteen popes, and many martyrs. The name “Callixtus” comes from the Deacon Callixtus who became the catacombs’s administrator. Under Callixtus’s command, the Catacombs of St. Callixtus became the official cemetery for the Roman Catholic Church. According to WEBSITE the Catacombs take up 90 acres in total, and go more than twenty meters deep. Similar in size to the Parisian catacombs, the Roman St. Callixtus also yields beautiful artwork in the forms of mosaics, paintings, and large statues. Yet, unlike the Paris catacombs, class arrangements existed in St. Callixtus. Specific areas for Popes separated them from the common folk, and The Crypt of St. Cecilia, known as the Roman patron saint for music, also lies isolated from the rest of the common burial places. Where the Paris catacombs separated the bodies by cemeteries they originally were from, the catacombs of St. Callixtus separated the bodies most commonly by